Psychoanalysis of Fire

The Psychoanalysis of Fire

-~.. I

i

r (~ ( ..

!

i

'

THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FIRE) :)..0

BY GASTON BACHELARD

wO . Lt \ . ~3.

°STG-OANt'4L:LS vv~

VlRJ , F 78c:r . F Y.J3 3 /3

Translated by

ALAN C. M. ROSS

/1bL( RQUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL ,

~ONDON

Copyright ,'1) 1964 by Alan C. M. Ross.

Preface


hu,

First published in England 1964 by Routledge & K egan Pau l Ltd., Bl'Oadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C,,," Printed in Great Britain by . Lowe & Brydont: (Prinkrs) Ltd., London, N.W.JO No part of thi.s book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief pas.!ages in criticism.

Literary crmcs have been aware of the great importance of Bachelard's work for many years, but this is the first time The Psychoanalysis of Fire has been available in English. ProfessQr Ross's lucid and eloquent translation gives an excellent sense of the original, which has a subversive wit reminding the English reader of the prose style of the nineteenth-century Samuel Butler. I speak of literary critics, because, as its conclusion makes clear, this is the area in which The Psychoanalysis of Fire lies, despite its tide and the numerous references to its author's earlier scientific works. Nearly a century ago Thomas Huxley, discussing the limitations of the scientific method, remarked: "I cannot conceive how the phenomena of cqns.cioJ.Jsne.ss....as SU~hdlJ~'~Q.. Qe. b_r.o_ughurithitube bounds of r-n yskal sci~<;~e did not mean that no science of psychology would ever be possible, but that the process of perception could not nullify itself, so to speak, by becoming objective to itself. Sciences are placed at various angles co the perceiving process, as physics is at an angle to the primitive categories of hot, cold, moist and dry, or to the primitive perception of red and blue. Psychology occupies another angle of perception, and Bachelard has begun to isolate still another, a basis for a systematic development of the critical study of the arts. The scientific procedure normally begins empirically, with realitythought of first of all as "out there," after which it gradually v

Psychoanalysis of Fire

becomes incorporated imo an intclIecrual construct. The arts, on the other hand, begin with a constructing power, generally called imagination, and embody ic in forms wich a clarity of communication that makes them objects of perception to others. The units of this constructing power are analogy and identity, which appear in literature as the figures of simile and meraphor. T..1Lthe imagination, jj]~_ i~_!1Q.!:...a..s...epa.rahle..d~tJJ1n of expcr~ it is alreadY..!i~ked by: anal~_ and.J_d~nrit.¥_wirluLd.Q2.en....Qth.e..c _a.sp~.ts....oLexpecimct--l~a t , is analogous to the imerJ1al h~~ we feel as \v.~rm~~looded animal?; its 's~rks~~ ~nalogous t.~s, the unirs of life; its flickering movement is !l,",I}alogo~~",,~jtarty..; its flames are phallic symbols, providing a further analogy to the sexual act, as the ambigui of the word "COtls.!Jm.roarioiL' indicM'es; irs transforming power is analogous to p~ation. These links of analogy are so adhesive that they spread all over the universe: we see in this book, as often elsewhere, how the pursuit of one mythical complex tends to absorb all other myths into it. The reader should consult Bachelard's books on the other three elements for a corrective. It is possible to take up a construct based on such analogies and correspondences, and then apply it to the external world as a key to the explanation of its phenomena. The typical examples of such constructs are in occultism, though rhey exist also in the Ptolemaic cosmology of the Middle Ages, with its correspondences of the seven metals, seven planers, seven days of the week, and the like. From one point of view, a somewhat narrow one, such constructs are both bastard art and bastard science, combining the limitations of the two with the genuine achievements of neither. A more liberal view might see them rather as helping to eXPand the horizons of both. We notice that poetry shows a strong affinity for constructs based on analogy and symmetry, Ptolemaic in Dante, occult in the Romantics and their successors down to Yeats, For the poet, the ele~ menrs will always be earth, air, fire and water; for the poet, the sun will always rise and set as it moves around the earth. It is only in science where such myths are a nuisance; yet even in science the tendency to make them is extraordinarily persistent. Almost every major group of dis.coveries in science brings with it a great wave of speculative cosmologies based on analogies to them. Bachelard gives many quaint examples from eighteenth-century science, along with such analogy-myths as "spontaneous combustion." He could have gone on with the nineteenth-cenrury speculations about "odic force" vi

I

I

.. \,

Preface

and the vitalist philosophies char followed early Danvinism, both of chem pure fire-myths. . , . The proper place for all such ~nalogy-makIng IS literat.ure, ~r, in earlier times, the mythology whIch eventually develops IOto ~jt­ erarure. Bachelard does not explicitly say that mythology, considered as a body of stories, is potential literature, but the whole trend of his book is to\vards that principle . He quotes some of the myths bout the orioin of fire which include the theme of a woman's hiding ~re in her ,b~lIy. This feat is known co be anatomically impossible by those who are telling and listening to the story. so why should it be told? We recall thac many similar stories are cold about water, that chere are more highly developed stories of the Jonah type, where a human being disappears into a. monstrous belly, that the concepcion of a hidden interior world of fire is the basis ~f ~ante's Inferno-in short, the story illustrates a strucrural pnnclple of story-telling, and its srudy eventually falls into the area of literary criticism. Centuries ago it was believed that the four possible combin~cions of the four "principles," hor, cold, moist and dry, produced, In the organic world, the four humors, and, in the inorganic world, the four elements. The hot and dry combination produced choler and fire, the hot and moist blood and air, the cold and moist phlegm and water, the cold and dry melancholy and earth. The four elements are not a conception of much use to m~:rdern chemistry-that is, they are not the elements of narure. But; as Bachelard's book and irs companion works shOW, and as an abundance of literature. down to Eliot's Qutrrtets also shows, eareh, air, water and fire are soll the four elements of imaginative experience, and always will be. Similarl~, .the, four humors are not a conception of any use to modern medlctne; they are not the constituents of human temperament. But they ma.y be the elements of imaginative perception, and Bachelard's analYSls of Hoffmann's fire-images is linked to a suggestion that poets may be "humors" not in their bodies or characters but in their poetry, a poetic temperament being reflected in a preference for the corresponding element. . What Bachelard calls a "complex" might better be called something else, to avoid confusion with the purely psychological co~­ plexes of actual life. I should call it a myth, because to ~e .a myth 15 a structural principle in literature. For example, there IS, m Bachelard's sense, a literary Oedipus complex: it appears in every comedy vii

Psychoanaly sis of Fire

1\

'

in which the hero is a son outwitting ills father ro get possession of a courtesan or other tabooed female . It is undoubtedly relaced to the Oedipus complex discllssed by Freud, but can hardly be treated as identical with it. The "complexes" dealt with in this book are actually the points at which literary myth becomes focussed on its cardinal points of creation, redemption and apocalypse. In the earlier parr: of our cultural tradirion the nre-world was most significantly the world of heavenly bodies between heaven proper and the earth. The Spirit descends from above in tongues of fire; the seraphim are angels of fire; the gods who preceded the angels are in charge of the planets; for .Christianity the world of superior spirits is all that is left of the un fallen world that God originally planned. The fire-world as the unfallen world of pre-creation appears in Bachelard as the "Novalis complex." The rerum of man co his original home, the complementary myth of ascending nre, is symbolized by the funeral pyre of Hercules (in the fourth section of Eliot's "Little Gidding," for example, this image is brought into direct contrast with the image of fire descending from the Holy Spirit), and comes into all the imagery of purgatorial fire in Dante and elsewhere. With the Romantics this more specifically human fire, which symbolizes the raising of the human state to a quasidivine destiny, becomes more purely a "Prometheus complex," especially to the more revolutionary Romantics, Shelley, Byron, Victor Hugo, who feel, like Ahab in Moby Dick, that the right form of fire-worship is defiance. The Last Judgment, the destruction of the world by fire and the absorption of the human soul into the soul of fire, is the "Empedocles complex." Thus the myth of "spontaneous combustion" is used by Dickens in Bleak House, to describe the death of Krook. In his preface Dickens srubbornly defends the actuality of the conception, and refers to some of the authorities quoted by Bachelard, including Le Cat. When Dickens finally says: "I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received"-in other words the Last Judgment-we begin to get a clue to the real reason why Dickens felt that such a device was essential to his story. This is merely one example of the kind of expanding insight into literature which can take off from Bachelard's witty and pungent study. NORTHROP FRYE

viii

Contents

Preface by Northrop Frye Introduction Chapter I Fire and Respect: The Prometheus Complex Chapter 2 Fire and Reverie: The Empedocles Complex Chapter 3 Psychoanalysis and Prehistory: The N ovalis Complex Chapter 4 Sexualized . Fire Chapter 5 The Chemistry of Fire: History of a False . Problem . . Chapter 6 Alcohol: the Water that Flames. Punch: The Hoffmann Complex. Spontaneous Combustions . Idealized Fire: Fire and Purity Chapter 7 Conclusion Footnotes .

v 7 13 21

43 59

In trod u'ction I must not look on

reality as being like myself. PACL ELUARD

We have only to speak of an object to think that weare being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. vVhat we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indicacions of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not a fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to the seduction of the inicial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one's :first observation. Any objective examination, when duly verified, refutes the results of the first contacr with the object. To start with. every.,. thing must be called into quescion: sensation, common sense, usage however constant, even etymology, for words, which are made for singing and enchanting, rarely make contact with thought. Far from marvelling ac: the object, objective thought must treat it ironically. Without this malign vigilance we \vould

r

I

I

I

Psychoanalysis of Fire

lnt'Yo.iu.;tio71

never adopt a truly objective attitude. vVhen we are dealing with men, our equals and our brothers, our method should be based on sympathy. Bur when confronted with this inert worl? whose life is not ours, which suffers nonc of our sorrows nor IS exalted by any of our joys, we must restrain all our enthusiasms, we musr repress our personal feelings. The axes of poetry and of science are opposed to one another from the outset. All that philosophy can hope to accomplish is to make poetry and sci~nce complementary, to unite them as twO well-defined oppomes. We mUSt oppose, then, t:O the enthusiastic, poetic mjn~ the taciturn, scientific mind, and for the scientific mind an attItude of preliminary antipathy is a healthy prec:1urion. We are going co study a problem thar no one has managed to approach objectively, one in which the initial charm of. the object is so strong that it still has the power to warp rhe mmds of the clearest thinkers and to keep bringing rhem back to the poetic fold in which dreams replace thought and poems conceal theorems. This problem is the psychological problem posed by our convictions about fire. It seems co me so definitely psychological :in nature that I do not hesitate to speak of a psychoanalysis of fire. Contemporary science has almost completely neglected the truly primordial problem that the phenomena of fire pose for the untucored mind. In the course of cime the chapters on fire in chemistry textbooks have become shorrer and shorter. There are, indeed, a good many modern books on chemistry in which it is impossible to find any mention of flame or fire. Fire is no longer a reality for science. Fire, that striking immedlate object, that object which imposes itself as a first choice ahead of many other phenomena, no longer offers any perspective for scientific investigation. Ie seems, then, that it would be instructive from a psychological point of view to trace the way inwhith this phenomenolo~ical value has be,come inflated an~ to. study how a problem which had been a prlIOe concern of SCIentific research for centuries was suddenly broken down into smaller problems or set aside without ever having been solved. When, as I have done on many occasions, one asks educated persons and even

eminent scientists, "What lS fire?", one receives va.gue or ~au~ tolocrical answers' which unconsciously repeat (he most moent and °fanciful philosophical theories. The rcason for .this is 0at the question has fallen within a zone that is only ~arc~lly obJe~­ rive, a zone in which personal intuitions and SCIentific expen~ mems are intermingled. As a matter of fact, we shall demonstrate that our intuitions of fire-more perhaps than of any other phenomenon-are heavily charged with fallacies from the past. These intuitions lead us to form immediate convictions about a problem which really should be solved by strict measurement and experimentation. . . In one of my early books1 Iattempred [0 descr.lbe,;n c~nn~c­ cion with hear phenomena, a clearly-defined aXIS 01 SCientific objectivization. Here I showed how geometry and algebra gradually contributed their abstract forms and prin.ciples so th~t experimentacion might be canalized in~o a scie.nt1~c. pa~b. It IS now the other axis-no longer the aXIS of ObJecnvlZatlOn but that of subjectivity-that I would like to e~plore in order to illustrate the double perspeccives that might be attached to all problems connected with the .knowledge of any par~icular reality, even a well-defined realiey. If we were correct ill our theorizing about the real implication of subject and object then we should attempt to make a clearer distinction between the pensive man and the thinker, without,however, any real hope of ever being able [0 make an absolute distinction between them. In any case it is the pensive man whom we wish to stu~y here, the man pensively seated by his fireplace in complete sohtude at a time when the fire is burning brightly as if it \vere the very voice of this solitude. We shall have, then, many opportunities co show the dangers thac first impressions, sympathetic attractions, and careless reveries hold for true scientific knowledge. We shall easily be able to observe the observer and so arrive at the principles underlying this value~laden or rather this hypnotized form of observation that is involved in gazing into a fire. Finally, this slightly hypnotized condition, that is surprisingly constant in all fire watchers, :is highly conducive to psychoanalytical investigation. A winter's evening with the wind howl-

1

3

Psyc hoanaly sis of fire

Introdu ction

ing around the house and a bright fire wiehin is all chat is required to make the grieving soul give voice to its memories and sorrows:

it assurances other than mere possession, and powers of convic-

It is the muted vo ice of the dying wintcr cmbers Which cnch<1nts chis heart of mine, This heart which like the covered flame

Sings as it is consumed.

Touler

tion o.ther than mere warmch and enthusiasm, jn short, co give the mmd proofs that are not as unsubstantial as flames! Bur we have already said enough to bring home to the reader the meaning of a psy choanaly sis of the subjective convictions related to the knowledge of fire phenome~a, or more briefly, of a psychoanalysis of fire. It will be by specific arguments that we shall make clear our general theses.

Bur although this book is easy to write when we go abour it line upon line, it seems to be quite impossible to give it a well-organized strucmre. To draw up a plan of human errors is an. enterprise impossible of fulfillment. It is particularly difficult m the case of a task like ours, which cannot be treated on the historical plan because the conditions that led [0 reverie in the past have not been eliminated by contemporary scientific education. Even the scientist, when not practising his speCialty, returns to the primitive scale of values. Thus it would be a vain un~ertaking to trace the historical development ofa thought whic.h has always run counter to the teachings of the history of SCIence. Instead we shall devote part of our efforts to showing that reverie takes up the same primitive d:iemes time and again and always operates as it would in primitive minds, and this in spire of the successes of systematic thought and even in face of the findings of scientific experiments. Nor shall we situate our smdies in a remote period in which . It: would be only too easy to illustrate the prevalence of fire :vorship. ~That appears, however, to. be a worthwhile project IS to establIsh the secret persistence of this idolatry of fire. Therefore the closer that the document we are using is to our own time the more forcefully will it demonstrate our thesis. Our aim will be to track down in histDrical records the permanent document that indicates a resistance to psychological evolution, that reveals the old man in the young child, the young child in the old man, ~he akhem~st in the engineer. But since, for us, the past represents Ignorance Just as reverie represents futility, our aim will be as follows: to cure the mind of its happy illusions, to free it from the narcissism caused by the first contact with the object, to give

We. would like, however, to add a further remark by way of warnIng. When our reader has finished reading this book he wil~ in no way have increased his knowledge. This will not be enorely .ourfault, perhaps, but rather will be the; price that must be paId for the method we have selected. When we tum inwards upon ourselves we turn aside from truth. When we carry. our inner ~xp.eriments, we inevitably contradict objective experunenr. Agam 1t muse berepeared that in this book when we talk of our personal e~periences we are demonstrating human errors. Our ~ork is offere?' then, as an example of that special psychoanalysLS that we believe would form a useful basis for all objective. srudies. It is an illustration of the general theses put fo-:ward In our recent book, The Form.ation of the Scientific M.md. (La. Forma:ion de l'esprit scientifique). The pedagogy of SCIentific lhsrruco.on would be improved if we could demon~trate ?learly how the fascination exerted by the object distorts mductions. It would not be difficult to write about water air e~th, salt, wine and blood in the same way that we have deal~ WIth fire in this brief outline. To tell the truth, these substances which receive an immediate emotional value and lea.d objective research to. the srudy of non-general themes are less clearly double-less clearly subjective and objective-than n.re; but neverth~less they too bear a false stamp, the false weight of unquestioned values. It would be more diffiCillt but also more fruitful to use psychoanalysis to examine the bases for certain other more rational, less immediate and hence less affective concepts than those attached to our experiences of substances. If we succeeded in inspiring any imitators, we should urge them to

-4

5

Psychoanalysis of Fire

study, from the same point of view as a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge, the notions of totality, of system, of element, evolution and development . , . One would have no trouble in discovering that underlyjng such notions is a system of heterogeneous values, indirect bur of an undeniably affective nature. In all chese examples one would find beneath the theories, more or less readily accepted by scientists and philosophers, convictions that are often quite ingenuous. These unquestioned convictions are so many extraneous flashes that bedevil the proper illumination chat the mind must build up in any project of the discursive reason. Everyone should seek to desrroy within himself these blindly accepted convictions. Everyone must learn to escape from the rigidity of the mental habits formed by contACt with familiar experiences. Everyone must destroy even more carefully than his phobias, his "philias," his complacent acceptance of first: intuitions. To sum up, while we do not seek to instruct the reader, we should feel rewarded for our efforts if we can persuade him to practice an exercise at which we are a master: to laugh at oneself. No progress is possible in the acquisition of objective knowledge without this self-critical irony. Finally; it should be noted that we have cited only a very small portion of the documents that we have compiled in the course of our endless readings in the old scientific books of [he seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a result, this short work is a mere outline of the subject. If it had been solely a question of recording stupid observations, it would have been only too easy to have written a large volume.

I

I

I

6

CHAPTER ONE

Fire and Respect:

The Prometheus Complex

Fire and heat provide modes of explanation in the most varied domains, because they have been for us the occasion for unforgettable memories, for simple and decisive .personal exp~­ riences. Fire is thus a privileged phenomenon which can explam anything. If all that changes slowly may be .exp.hined by lif~, . all chat changes quickly is explained by fire . Fue 15 the ultra-hvIng element. It is intinute and it is universal. It lives in our heatt. Ie lives in the sky. It rises from the depths of the substance and offers itself with the warmth of love. Or it can go back down into the substance and hide there, latent an'd pent-up, like hate and vengeance. Among all phenomena, it is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. Ie shines in Paradise. Ie burns in Hell. Ir is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and it is apocalypse. It is a pleasure for the good child sitting prudently by t he hearth; yet it punishes any disobedience when the child wishes to play too close to its flames. It is well-being and it is respect. It is a tutelary and a terrible di,rinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; rhus it is one of the principles of universal explanation. vVere it not for these initial values it takes on, neither the B

7

Psycbo.71Ialysis of Fire

tolerance of common opinion 'w hich accepts the most flagrant conuadictions nor the enthusiasm which accumul::!tes, ,vithotlt proof, the most lauclawry epithets, would be understandable. For example, what affection and 'what nonsense [here is in [his page 'written by a doctor at [he end of the eighteenth century: I mean by this fire nor a violent, tumultuous, irritating and unnatural heat which burns instead of cooking the bodily humors just as it does the foods; but rather thac gende, moderate, arom:ltic fire which is accompanied by a certain humidity having an affinity with that of blood and which penetrates the heterogeneous humors as well as the nutritious juices, separates them, wears them down, polishes the roughness :lnd birrerness of their several partS and finally brings them to such a degree of gendeness and refinement that they are now adapted to our nature.!

In this page there is not a single argument, nor a single epithet, which can be granted an objective meaning. And yet how convinchg it is! To me it seems to combine the persuasive power of the doctor and the insinuating power of rhe remedy. Just as fire is the mosr insinuating of medicaments, so in extolling its virtues the doctor is at his most persuasive. In any case I never reread this page-let him who can explain this invincible associationwithout remembering the grave and kindly doctor with the gold watch who used to come to my bedside when I was a child and who would calm my worried mother with one learned word. It would be a winter's morning in our poor home. The fire would be shining in the hearth . They would give me syrup of Tolu. I can remember how I would lick the spoon. Where are they, those days filled with the warm smell of balsam and the hot aromas of the medicines?

Fir e

to carry out.

,m.'! Ref peet

Indeed, I do nor thillk I lit a fire my--self before

I \vas eighteen y enrs old. h was on!y when I lived alone that I became master of my (nvn hearth. But I still t:lke spcci;tl pride in the art of kindling [hat I learned from my father. I think I would ra.dler fail ro teach a good philosophy lesson than fail to light my morning fire. Thus ho\\-· keenly sympathecic I am when I read in ehe work of a favorite author [Ducarla), who is usually occupied wieh scientific research, this page which to me is almost a page of personal memories: 2 I have often amused myself with this trick when I was out visicing or when I had company at home: the fire would die down; for a long time the others would poke at it knowingly through a thick cloud of smoke, but in vain. Finally they would resort to chips and coal which often did not arrive in time; after tbe logs had been turned over a good many times, I would succeed in getting hold of the fire tongs, a feat that requires patience, audacity and some luck. I would even call a halt to the festivities while I pretended to cast a spell, like the faith healers to whom the Faculty of Medicine rums over a paricm whose life is despaired of; then all I would do would be to put a few half-burned logs f~cing one another, often withom those present noticing that I had couched anything. I would sit back, apparently withom having done anything at all; they would look at me as if to tell me to get busy, and yet the flame would come and by hold of the pile of logs; then they would accuse me of having thrown some kind of flash powder on ie, and, in the end, would usually acknowledge that I had made the most of the draught; they did not go so far as to inquire inco the complete, the effluent and the radiant kinds of heat, or into pyrospheres, translative speeds, and calorific series.

When I was sick my father would light a fire in my room. He would take great care in arranging the logs over the kindling chips anci in slipping the handful of shavings between the andirons. To fail to light the fire would have been incredibly stupid. I could not imagine my father having any equal in the performance of this function, which he would never allow anyone else

And Ducarla goes on to display both his domestic taJents and his ambitious theoretical system of knowledge in wh.ich the propagation of fire is described as a geometric progression which follows "calorific series." In spite of this mathematical intrusion., the first principle of the "objeccive" thought of Ducarla is very evident, and its psychoanalysis is immediate: let us put glowing ember against glowing ember and the flame will come to brighten our hearth.

8

9

Fire !I?1d Rt'rp %t

Psychoanalysis of Fire

,I

Perhaps the reader here can discern an example of the method that we propose to follow in our psychoanalysis of objective know-ledge. It is really a question of finding how unconscious values affect the very basis of empirical and scientific knowledge. Vie must then show the mutual lighc which objective and social knowledge constantly sheds 011 subjective and personal Imowledge, and vice versa. We must show in the scientific experiment traces of the experience of the child. Thus we shall be justified in speaking of an unconscious of tbe scientific mind--of the heterogeneous natUre of cerrain concepts, and We shall see converging, in our study of any particular phenomenon, convictions chac have been formed in the most varied fields. For one ching, perhaps it has not been sufficiently noced that fire is more a social reality chan a natural reality. To see the justification for this remark there is no need to go into lengthy considerations of the role of fire in primitive societies nor to insist on the technical difficulties involved in keeping a fire burning; all that is necessary is to practice some positive psychology by examining the structure and the education ofa civilized mind. In point of fact, respect for fire is a respect that haS been tauo'ht; . . c It IS not a natural respect. The reflex which makes us pull bade our finger from the flame of a candle does not play any conscious role in our knowledge about fire. One may even be astonished that it has been accorded so much importance in textbooks on elementary psychology, where it is oifer~d as the eternal example of the intervention of a sort of reflective thinking within the reflex, of a conscious thought in the midst of the most violent sensation. In reality the social prohibitions are the first. The narural experience comes only in second place to furnish a material proof which is unexpeCted arid hence too obscure to establish an item of objective knowledge. The burn, that is to say the natunil inhibition, by confirming the social interdictions, thereby only gives all the more value to the paternal intelligence in the child's eyes. Thus there is at the base of the child's knowledge of fire an interaction of the natural and the social in which the social is almost always dominant. Perhaps this can be seen 10

better if we compare rhe pin-prick and (he burn . They borh canse reflexes. Why then are points not the object of respect nnd fear in the same way as fire? Ic is precisely because the social prohibitions concerning poims are much weaker than the prohibitions concerning fire. This, then, is the true basis for the respect shown to .fiame; if the child brings his hand close to the fire his father raps him over the knuckles with a ruler. Fire, then , can strike without having (0 burn. vVhether this fire be flame or hear, lamp or stove, the parents' vigilance is the same. Thus fire is initially the object of a general prohibition; hence this conclusion: the social interdiction is our first general knowledge of fire. \Vhat we firSt learn about fire is that we must not touch it. As the child grows up, the prohibitions become imelleccual rather than physical; the blow of the ruler is replaced by the angry voice; the angry vOlce by the recital of the dangers of fire, by the legends concerning fire from heaven. Thus the natural phenomenon is rapidly mixed in with complex and confused items of social experience which leave little room for the acquiring of an unprejudiced knowledge. Consequently, since the prohibitions are primarily social imerdicoons, the problem of obtaining a personal knowledge of fire is the problem of clever disobedience. The child wishes to do what his father does, bue far away from his father's presence, and so like a little Prometheus he steals some matches. He then heads for che fields where, in the hollow ofa litde valley, he and his companions build a secret fireplace that will keep them warm on the days when they decide to play truant from school. The city child has little acquaintance with the joys of the fire flaming up berweenthree stones; he has not tasted the fried sloe nor the snail that has been placed all slimy on the fiery embers. He may very well escape the Prometheus complex whose action I have often experienced. Only this complex enables us to understand the interest that is always aroused by the rather trite legend of the father of Fire. Moreover, one must not hasten to confuse this Prometheus complex with the Oedipus complex of classical psychoanalySis. Doubdess the sexual components of reveries II

Psychoanalysis of Fire

about fire are particularly intense, and we shall anempt jn a larer chapter CO demonstrate this fact. Perhaps, however, it js better to designate all the shades of unconscious convictions by different formulas, until we can see later how the various complexes are related . As it happens, one of the advantages of the psychoanalysis of objective knowledge that we are proposing co carry our seems co be that we are examining a zone that is less deep than that in \vhich the primitive instincts function ; and it is because th is zone is intermediary that it has a determinative action on clear thought, on scientific thoughc. To know facts and to make things are needs that we can characterize in themselves without necessarily having to relate them co the will to power. There is in man a veritable will to intellectuality. We underestimate the need to understand when we place it, as pragmatism and Bergsonism have done, under the absolute dependence of the principle of utility . We propose, then, to place together under the name of the Prometheus complex all those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers, more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers. Now it is by handling the object, it is by perfecting our objective knowledge, that we can best hope to prove decisively that we have attained the itltellectual level that we have so admired in our parents and in our teachers. The acquiring of supremacy through the drive of more powerful instincts naturally will appeal co a much greater number of individuals, but minds of a rarer stamp also must be examined by the psychologist. If pure intellectuality is exceptional, it is nonetheless very characteristic of a specifically human evolution. The Prometheus complex is the Oedipus complex of the life of the intellect.

Il

CHAPTER TWO

Fire and Reverie:

The Empedocles Complex

Modern psychiatry has made clear the psychology of the pyromaniac. It has shown the sexual nature of his tendencies. On the other hand it has brought to light the serious traumat.ism that a psyche can suffer from the spectacle of ~ roof or haystack that has been set on fire, from the sight of the great blaze of .fire shining against the night sky and extending our over the broad expanse of the ploughed fields. Almost always a case of incendiarism in the counuy is the sign of the diseased mind of some shepherd. Like bearers of sinister torches, these men of low degree transmit from age to age the contagion of their lonely dreams. The sight of a fire will cause some man to become a pyromaniac almOSt as inevitably as a pyromaruac will some day start a fire. Fire smolders in a soul more surely than it does under ashes. The arsonist is the most dissembling of criminals. At the asylum of SaIDc-Ylie, the pyromanic with the most marked tendencies is a very obliging fellow. There is only one thing that he claims he does not know how to do, that is to light the stove. Like psychiatry, classical psychoanalysis has long studied dreams about fire. They are among the clearest, the most dislJ

Psychoanalysis of Fire

Fire and Re't'me

tinct, those for which the sexual interpretation is the most certain. Therefore we shall nor touch upon this problem. Since we arc limiting ourselves to psychoanalyzing a psycruc layer that is less deep, more intellectualized, we muse replace ehe study of dreams by the study of reverie, and, more particularly, in this little book we muse study the reverie before the fire. In our opinion, trus reverie is entirely different from the dream by the very fact that it is always more or less centered upon one object. The dream proceeds on its way in linear fashion, forgetting its original path as it hastens along. The reverie works in a star pattern. It returns to its center to shoot out new beams. And, as it happens, the reverie in front of the fire, the gentle reverie that is conscious of its well-being; is the most naturally centered reverie. It may be counted among those which best hold fast to their object or, if one prefers, to their pretext. Hence this solidity and this homogeneity which give it such charm that no one can free himself from it. Ir is so well defined that it has become banal to say, "We love to see a log fire burning in the fireplace." In this case it is a question of the quiet, regular, conrrolled fire that is, seen when the great log emits tiny flames as it burns. It is a phenomenon both monotonous and bril.liant, a really total phenomenon: it speaks and soars, and it sings. The fire con1ined to the fireplace was no doubt for man the first object of reverie, the symbol of repose, the invitation to repose. One can hardly conceive of a philosophy of repose that would not include a reverie before a flaming log fire. Thus, in out opinion, to be deprived of a reverie before a burning fire is to lose the first use and the truly human use of fire. To be sure, a fire wanns us and gives us comfort. But one only becomes fully aware of this comforting sensation after quite a long period of contemplation of the flames; one only receives comfon from the fire when one leans his elbows on his knees and holds his head in his hands. This attitude comes from the distant past. The child by the fire assumes it naturally. Not for nothing is it the attitude of the Thinker. It leads to a very special kind of attention which has nothing in common with the attention

involved in watching or observing. Very rarely is it utilized for any orhcr kind of comemplation. 'VVhen near (he fire, one must be seated; one must res( \vithouc sleeping; one must cng:tge in reverie on a specific object. Of course the supporters of the theory of the utilitarian formation of the mind will not :lccept a theory-so facile in irs ide:tlism, and they will point out to us the multiple uses of fire in order to ascertain the exact interest that we have in it: not only does fire give heat, but it also cooks meats. As if the complex hearth, the peasant's hearth, precluded reverie! From the notched teeth of the chimney hook there hung the black cauldron. The three-legged cooking pot projected over the hot embers. Puffing up her cheeks to blow into the steel tube, my grandmother w.ould rekindle the sleeping flames. Everything would be cooklng at the same time; the potatoes for the pigs, the choice potatoes for the family. For me there would be a fresh egg cooking under the ashes. The intensity of a fire cannot be measured by the egg timer; the egg was done when a drop of water, oEren a drop of saliva, would 'evaporate on the shell. Recently I was very much surprised (0 read that Denis Papin used the same procedure as my grandmother in tending his cooking pOt. Before getting my egg I was condemned to eat a soup of bread and burter boiled to a pulp. One day, being a hot-tempered and impetuous child, I threw whole spoonfuls of my soup into the teeth of the chimney hook saying, "Eat, chimney hook; eat!" But on days when I was on my good behavior, they would bring out the waffle iron. Rectangular in fonn, it would crush down the fire of thorns burning red as the spikes of sword lilies. And soon the gaufre or waffle wou.ld be pressed againSt my pinafore, warmer to the fingers than to the lips; Yes then indeed I was eating fire, eacing its gold, its odor and even its crackling while the burning gaufre was crunching under my teeth. And it is always like that, through a kind of extra pleasure-like dessert-that nre shows itself a friend of man. It does not confine itSelf to cooking; it makes things crisp and crunchy. It purs the golden crust on the griddle cake; ic gives a material form to man's festivities. As far back

14

Ij

t

Psycho(lnalysis of Fir e

Fire and Reverie

in time as we can go, '[he gastronomic value has always been more highly prized than the nutritive value, and it is in joy and not in sorrow that man discovered his intellect. The conquest of the superfluous gives us a greater spirirual excitement than the conquest of the necessary. Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

In order to obtain the view of Sicily in che early morning light as it stands Out fiery red against (he glinering ocean, the m.vellcr makes his way up (he slopes of Mount Etna as rught is falling. He stops to sleep in the Goat Grotto, bur, since sleep \vill not come, he dreams before his fire of birch logs; he naturally remains

But the reverie by the fireside has axes that are more

. .. with his elbows leaning on his knees and his eyes fixed on the glowing embers of his fire from which white and blue flames escape in a thousand varied forms and undulations. "Now there, " he thought co himself, "is a reduced image of the action of the flame and the movemenc of the lava during the erup~ons of i\Iount Etna. Why have I not been called upon to contemplate this admirable spectacle in all its horrors?"

philosophicaL Fire .is for the man who is comemplating it an example of a sudden change or development and an example of a circumstantial development. Less monotonous and less abStract than flowing wa.ter, even more quick to grow and to change than the young bird we watch every day in irs nest in the bushes, fire suggests the desire to change, to speed up the passage of rime, to bring aU of life to its conclusion, to its hereafter. In these circumstances (he reverie becomes truly fascinating and dramatic; it magnifies human destiny; it links the small to the great, '[he hearth to the volcano, the life of a log to the life of a world . The fascinated individual hears the cali of the funeral pyre. For him destruction is more than a change, it is a renewal. This very special and yet very general kind of re.verie leads co a true complex in which are united the love and the respect for fire, the instinct for living and the instinct for dying. To save rime one could call it the Empedocles complex. One can see its development in a curious work of George Sand. It is one of her early works, saved from oblivion by Amore Sand. Perhaps this Dreamer's Story (Histoire duoRiveur) was written before the first trip to Italy, before the first Volcano, after the marriage but before the first love affair. In any case it bears the mark of the Volcano, imagined rather than described. This is often the case in literature. For example, one will find an equally typical page in the work of Jean-Paul Richter, who dreams that the sun, son of Earth, has been shot up to heaven through a mountain's erupting crater. But since the reverie is more instructive for us than the dream, let us follow the account in George Sand.

Love, death and fire are united at the same moment. Through its sacrifice in the heart of the flames, the mayfly gives us a lesson in eternity. This total death which leaves no trace is the guarantee that our whole person has departed for the beyond. To lose everything in order co gain everything. The lesson taught by the fire is dear: "After having gained aU' thrdugh skill, through love or through violence you must give up all, you must annihilate yomsclC' (D'Annunzio, Contemplation de La Mort:) As Giono points out in his Les Vraies Richesses such is at any rate the intellectual urge "in old races, as among the Indians of India, or among the Aztecs, among people whose religious philosophy and religious cruelty have rendered anaemic to the point of total desiccacion so chat the head has become

r6

17

How can one admire a spectacle chat one has never seen? But, as if to give us a berter indication of the true axis of his magnifying reverie, the author continues: Why have I not the eyes of an ant in order to admire this burning birch log? With what transporrs of blind joy and of love's frenzy these sWarms of little white moths come to hurl themselves into it! For thein this is the volcano in all its majesty. This is the speccacle of an immense conflagration. This dazzling light intoxicates and exalts chern as the sight of the whole forest on .fire would do for me.

Psychoanalysis of Fire

Fire arTd Reverie

merely a globe of pure intelligence." Only chest intellectualized people, these individuals subjected to the instinccs of an intellecmal formation, continues Giono "can force che door of che furnace and enter into the mystery of che fire." This is something that George Sand is going to make de~r co us. As soon as the reverie becomes concemrated, the gerue of the Volcano appears. He dances "on blue and red embe~s . . . using as his mount a snowflake carried along by the hurncane." He carries the dreamer away beyond the quadrangular monument whose founding .is traditionally attributed to Empedoclcs. "Come, my king. Put on your crown of white. flame. and bl~e sulphur from which there comes forth a dazzlmg ram of, dlamonds and sapphires." And the Dreamer, ready for the sacrifice, replies: "Here I am! Envelop me in rivers of bu~ning. lava, clasp me in your anns of fire as a lover clasps his bnde. I have donned the red mantle. I have adorned myself in your colors. Put on, too, your burning gown of purple. Cover your sides with its dazzling folds. Ema, come, Etna! Break open your gates of basalt, spew forth your pitch and sulphur. Vomit forth the stone, the metal and the fire! . . ." In the heart of the fire, death is no longer death. "Death could not exist in that ethereal region to which you are carrying me . . . My fragile body may be consumed by the fire, my soul must be united with those tenuous elements of which you are composed." "Very well!" said the Spirit, casting over the Dreamer part of his red mantic, "Say farewell to the life of men and follow me into the life of phantoms." Thus a reverie by the fireside, when the flame twises the frail birch branches, is sufficient to evoke the volcano and the funeral pyre. The bit of suaw which flies away with the smoke is sufficient to urge us forward to meet our destiny. What better proof is there that the contemplation of fire brings. us back to the very origins. of philosophic thought? If fire, which, after all, is quite an exceptional and rare phenomenon, was taken to be a constituent element of the Universe, is it not because it is an element of human thought, the prime element of reverie? When one has recognized a psychological complex, it

At times it is before an immense fire of live coals that the soul feels itself affected by the Ernpedocles complex. The Foscarina of D'AnnuDzio, burning with the inner flames of a hopeless love, desires death on the funeral pyre while, fascinated, she contemplates the furnace of the glass-blower: 2 "'To disappear, to be swallowed up, to leave no trace!' moaned the heart: of the woman intoxicated with the idea of destruction. 'In a

18

19

seems that one has a becter and more synthetic unde(s(anding of certain poetic works. In point of fact a poetic , ...'ork can h;:trdly be unified except by a complex. If the complex is iack.ing, [he work, cur off from its roots, no longer communicates ,"virh the unconscious. It appears cold, artificial, false. On the orher hand even an unfinished work such as the Empedokles of Holderlin, which has appeared in various readings containing numerous repetitions, nevertheless retains a cerra in uniey because of the mere facr that it has been grafted upon rhe Empedocles complex. While Hyperion chooses a life which is mingled more intimately with that of Nature, Empedocles chooses a death which fuses him into the pure element of the Volcano. As M. Pierre Bercaux has aptly pointed out, these two solutions are more alike than it appears at first sight. Empedocles is a Hyperion who has eliminated the elements of Werther-like morbid sentimentality, who, by his sacrifice, consecrates his strength and does not confess his weakness; he is "the man of ripe experience, the mythical hero of antiquity) wise and sure of himself, for whom voluntary death is an act of faith proving the force of his wisdom." 1 Death in rhe flame is the least lonely of deaths. Ie is truly a cosmic death in which a whole universe is reduced to nothingness along wieh the thinker. The funeral pyre accompanies him in his passing. Giova cio solo che non muore, e solo Per noi non muore, cio che muor con noi. Only that is good which does not die, and only, For us, chac does not die which dies with us. D'Annunzio

Psychoa1U11ysis of Fire

second this fire could devour me like a vine twig, like a ~isp o~ , And she would approach [he open aperrures t ~oug straw, h' ' b ghtly . which the liquid flames could be seen 5 mmg more n chan summer's noon-day suo and coiling around [he day potS m which was melting the still shapeless metal that the workers, , d bout the furnace behind the firescreens, were scoop, , 'h h b h statlone a ,109 up WIt . h an; ron rod in order to glVe l( shape WIC t e reat LL

from their lips," .' 1 (1e I ( can be seen that in the most vaned cU'cu~stances 1 . heme It call of the funeral pyre remains a fundamenta p.o enc t .to any real-hfe observauon. . modern life no longer correspon ds m . H to It does stir our emotions nonetheless. From VIctOr. ugo. contmues, hke H enn" d e R'egru'er , the funeral pyre of Hercules . f ki d That ' mbo'l to portray to us the desnny 0 man ' l d n '. a natura1 sy , which is purely artificial insofar as objeCtIve. know e ge IS ~oncerned remains then profoundly real and. acnve for unconscIOUS reveries. The dream is stronger than expenence .

I

l

I 10

II

I

CHAPTER THREE

Psychoanalysis and Prehistory:

The Novalis Complex

Psychoanalysis has already been long engaged in the srudy of legends and mythologies. It has prepared for studies of this kind a working stock of explanations that are sufficiently rich to throw light upon the legends surrounding the conquest of fire. But what psychoanalysis has not yet completely systematized-although the works of C. G. Jung have cast a bright light upon chis point-is the study of scientific explanations, of objective explanations, which purport to account for the discoveries of prehistoric man. In this chapter we shall hring together and complete the observations of C. G. Jung by calling attention to the weakness of rational explanations. In the first place we must criticize the modern scientiE.c explanations which seem to us quire Jnappropriate for prehistoric discoveries. These scientific explanations originate in an arid and cursory racionalism which claims to be profiting by recurring factual evidence; bur which is, however, quite unrelated to the psychological conditions of the primitive discoveries. There is then a place, we feel, for an indirect and secondary psychoanalysis which would conStantly seek the unconscious under the conscious, the subjective value under the objective evidence, :u

PsyclJo4naly_,il- and PrebisfOi j

Psychoa1l(/lysis of Fire

the reverie beneath the experiment. One can study only wh~t one has first dreamed about. Science is formed rather on a revene than on an experiment, and it ta1ces a good many expe.riments to dispel the mists of the dream. It should be nored partl~ularly that the same action working on the same substance to give ~he same objective result does not have the sam~ ~~iecc.ive mearung in mentalities as differenr as those of the pnnutlve man and the educated modern man. For primitive man thought is a centralized reverie' for the educated modern man reverie is a loose form of rhough't, The dynamic meaning is completely opposite in the two cases. For example, it is a leiunotiv of the rationalist explanation that the first men produced fire by the rubbing together, of two pieces of dry wood. But the objective reasons that are ~vo~ed to explain how men are supposed to ha~e been led to unagme this procedure are very weak These wnters often do not eve~ venture to try and throw light upon the psychology of thlS first discovery. Among the few authors who do concern themselves with an explanation, most recall that forest fires are produced by the "rubbing together" of ~ran~hes in summer. .They are applying juSt that recurrent ranonalism that we wl~h to expose. They are judging by inference .f:9m a known ~Cl~~ce without seeking to recapture the condltlons, of the pnmltlve observation. Nowadays, when people cannot discover another cause of a forest fire, they end by thinking tha:t the unknown cause may be the action of rubbing. But in fact we can say that

the pbenomenonin its natural aspect has never been obser~ed. If one were to obs<;rve it, it would not be, properly speaking, a rubbing action that one would think of ,if one approached e

0

phenomenon from an ingenuous standpomt. One would think rather of a shoc k; one would find nothing that might su.gg,est a phenomenon which is so prepared, l~ng~l~ting and progressIve as the rubbing which is to cause the Igmtmg of the wood. e arrive, then, at this critical conclusion: none _of the practlces based on rubbing that are used by primitive peoples to produce fire can be direcdy suggested by a phenomenon ~f nature. . These difficulties had not escaped Schlegel. WIthout puttmg

:v

11

forward any solution, he had seen quire clear1y rhat the problem set forth in rational terms did not correspond to the psychological possibilities of primitive man,! The mere invention of fire, the cornerstone of the whole cultural edifice, as the fable of Prometheus so \vell expresses it, presents insurmountable difficulties in our conjectures about mnn in a crude scate of civilization, For us nothing is more common thun fire; but man could have wandered in the deserc for millions of years \V'ith~ ~U( once having seen fire on earthly soil. Let us grant an eruptmg volcano, a forest set on fire by lightning : hardened in l,is na\<edness against the rigors of the seasons, would he have run fOl\\o'aro at once to warm himself? Would he not rather have taken flight? The sight of fire frightens most animals, except those which throuO'h a domestica.ted life have become accustomed to it , , . Even ~ter having experienced the beneficiem effect of a nre offered him by ~tur~, how would he have belen able to keep it going? Once exangmshed, how would he have been able to rekindle it? Even if two pieces of dry wood had fallen for ~he first time into the hands of the savage, what previous experience would indicate to him tha~ they could be ignited by a long-continued and rapid robbing acnon?

rum

On the other hand, if a rational and objective explanation is really quite unsacisfacrory in accounting for a discovery made by a primitive mind, a psychoanalyQ.C3l explanation, however overbol~ it may seem, must in the end be the true psychological explanatlOn. . In the fi~st place it must be recognized mat rubbing is a highly sexualIzed experience, Merely by glancing through the psych~logical documents amassed by classical psychoanalysis one will have no difficulty in convincing oneself of this fact. Secondly, one need only make a systemacic study of the items ~f informa~o,n gained by a special psychoanalysis of the impresSlOns perrammg to heat, to be convinced that the objective ~tt~mpt to produce fire by rubbing is suggested by entirely mnmate experiences. In any case, it is in this direction that ,the circuit between the phenomenon of fire and irs reproduction is the shortest. The love act is the fust scientific hypothesis about c

13

Psychoanalysis of Fire

PsyclJo"-l!alysis and Prehistory

the objective reproduction of fire. Prometheus is a vigorous lover rather than an intelligent philosopher, and the vengeance of the gods is the vengeance of a jealous husband. As soon as one has fonnulated this psychoanalytical observation, a great number of legends and customs are easily explained; curious expressions that have been unconsciously mingled with rational explanacions appear in a new light. Thus Max Muller, who broughc such a penetrating psychological intuition to the study of human origins, comes quite close to the psychoanalytical inruition without, however, actually discerning ir. 2 "There were So many things to relate about fire!" And here then is the first: "It was the son of two pieces of wood," Why the son? Who is fascinated by this genetic point of view? Primitive man or Max Muller? In what way is such an image clearest? Is it clear objectively or subjectively? Where is the experience which throws light upon it? Is it the objective experience of the rubbing together of two pieces of wood or is it the intimate experience of a more gentle, more caressing kind of rubbing which excites the body of the beloved? One has only to ask these questions in order [0 disclose the source of the conviction which believes that fire is the son of wood. Should we be surprised that this impure fire, the fruit of a secret love. should already be marked almost from its inception with the Oedipus complex? The expression of Max Muller is revealing in this regard: the second thing to be relaced about primitive fire was "how, no sooner had it been born, than it devoured its father and mother, that is to say the two pieces of wood from which it had sprung." Never has the Oedipus complex been better and more completely revealed: if you lack fire, this burning failure will gnaw at your heart, the fire will remain within you. If you produce fire, the sphinx itself will consume you. Love is but a fire that is to be transmitted. Fire is bur a love whose secret is to be detected. Since Max Muller naturally was not able to profit by the new knowledge provided by the psychological revolution of the Freudian era, certain inconsistencies may be noted even in his linguiStic thesis. He wrote, for example: "And when primitive

man -pict1lred fire and named ie wh:J.t must have happened? He could name it only according ro whar it did; it was that ,""hieh consumed
~4

The generally accepted method of throwing light upon the psychology cif prehistoric man is to study still existing primitive peoples. Bur for a psychoanalysis of objective 1mowledge there are other inscances of primitiveness which seem to us to be ultimately more peninenr. Indeed, we need only consider a new phenomenon to verify che difficulty of adopting a truly adequate objective attitude. It seems thar the unknown aspect of the phenomenon is actively and positively opposed to ics objectivation. To the unkno'I.L'n aspecc ic is not so much ignorance which corresponds as error, and error that is most heavily overladen with sub)ective defects. In order to consrruct a psychology of primitiveness ic is sufficient, then, co consider an essentially new piececif scientific knowledge and to follow the reactions of nonscientific, ill-educated minds thac are ignorant of the methods of effective scientific discovery. The science of electricity in the eighteenth century offers us in this respect an indispensable mine of psychological observations. It should be particularly noted thac electrical fire, even more perhaps than ordinary hre, which 15

Psychoanalysis of Fire

had then been relegated to the stanIS of a banal phenomenon without psychoanalytical interest, was a sexualized fire. Since i( is mysterious, it is clearly sexual. Concerning the idea of friction, of which we have JUSt pointed our the obvious primary sexuality) we shall again find applied to electricity all that ,\ve have said about fire. Charles Rabigueau, "Lawyer, engineer, holder of the King's privilege for all his works on Physics and Mechanics," wrote in 1753 a treatise on "The Spect;1Cle of Elementary Fire or A Course in Experimental Electricity" (Le spectacle du feu eUmentaire ou Cours d'e!ectricite experimentale). In this work one can see a kind of reciprocal of the psychoanalytical thesis that we are putting forward in chis chapter to explain the production of fire by friction. Since friction is the cause of electricity, Rabiqueau will develop an electrical theory of the sexes on this theory of friction: The gentle rubbing separates the parts composed of spirits of air which are opposed to the passage and the fall of a spiriruous substance that we call seminal fluid. This electrical friction or rubbing arouses within us a sensation, a tickling through the sharpness of the points of the spirit of fire in proportion as the rarefaction takes place and .this spirit of fire is accumulated at the place being rubbed. Then the ligliid, unable to maintain the lightness of che spirit of fire accumulated in the atmosphere, leaves its place and comes co fall in the womb in which there is also atmosphere: the vagina is merely the pipe leading to the general reservoir formed by the womb. There is in the feminine sex a sexual part. This part is to that sex whae the sexual part of man is to the man. This part is subject to a similar rarefaction, tickling and sensation. This same pare also participates in the rubbing action. The points of the spirit of fire are felt even more by the feminine sex ... The feminine sex is the depository of the tiny human spheres which are in the ovaries. These little spheres are an electrical substance, inert and lifeless; like an unlit candle or an egg ready to receive the spark of life, or the pip of an apple or a seed; or finally, like the flint or match which awaits the spirit of tire ... We have perhaps already tired the patience of our reader; bue similar texts, which could be extended and multiplied, cell 26

Ps),cho!1nalyris and

Pr~history

quite clearly of the secret preoccupations of a mind which cbims to be devoting itself to "pure mechanics." One can see, moreover, rh:l( the center of the convicrions is not at all the objective experiment. Everything that rubs, that burns, or that electrifies is inimediately considered capable of explaining the :lct of generation. \Vhen the unconscious secret harmonics of rubbing are lacking) when they have a poor resonance in dry and austere souls, immediately the :lct of rubbing, restored to its purely mechanical aspect, loses its power of explanation. From this point of view one could perhaps aCCOunt for, psychoanalytically, the protracted resistance encountered by the kinetic theory of heat. This theory, very clear to che conscious understanding, entirely adequate for a mind that is sincerely positivistic, appears to be lacking in depth-we should really say lacking in unconscious satisfaction-co a prescientific mind. The author of an Essay on the Cause of Electricity (Essai sur la cause de l'elect?'icite) , addressed in a series of letters co G. Watson) reveals in these terms his disillusionment: "I find nothing to be so incorrectly reasoned as the scatement thac fire is caused by rubbing. It seems t9 me that one might just as well say that water is caused by the pump." As for Mme du ChateIer, she does not appear to find in this thesis the slightest enlightenment and is content to admit that fire is a miracle: "It is undoubtedly one of the greateSt miracles of Nature chat the most violent Fire can be produced in a moment by the Striking rogether of bodies that have the coldeSt appearance." Thus a fact which is plainly evident to a scientific mind grounded in the teaching of modern energetics and which can understand immediately that the sudden tearing away of a :flint panicle can lead to its incandescence, is an. object of mystery for the prescienrific mind of Mme du ChateIet. She needs a substantialist explanation, a profound explanation. Profoundness is somedung one hides; it is something one says nothing about. One is always justified in being preoccupied with it. US

Our theory would appear less daring if the reader would only free himself from an intransigent utilitarianism and would 27

Psychoanalysis of Fire

Psychoanalysis and Prebislmy

cease to imagine prehistoric m<1n as being automatically subject to misfonune and necessiry. It is in vain that all travellers cell us about the carefree life of primicive man: we nevertheless continue to shudder at our mental picrure of life ac the time of the cave man. Perhaps our ancestor was more receptive (0 pleasure, more conscious of his happiness in proponion as he was Jess sensicive to suffering. The warm sense of well-being arising from physical love musc have been transferred in(O many primitive experiences. To set fire to the scick by sliding it up and down in che groove in the piece of dry wood cakes rime and patience. But this work must have been very agreeable (0 an individual whose reverie was wholly sexual. It was perhaps while engaged in this gentle task that man learned co sing. In any case it is an obviously rhythmic kind of task, a task which answers to che rhythm of the worker, which brings him lovely, multiple resonances: the arm that rubs, che pieces of wood that strike together, the voice chat sings, all are united in the same harmony and the same rhyclunic increase in energy; everything converges on to the one hope, on to an objective whose value is known. As soon as one engages in the action of rubbing, one experiences a pleasant objective warmth ac the same time thac one has the warm impression of an agreeable form of exercise. The rhythms are mutually supporting. They are mutually induced and continue through self-induction. If we accepted the psychological principles of rhythm analysis of M. Pinheiro dos Santos, who advises us co give temporal reality only to that which vibrates, we would understand immediately the value of che vital dynamism and of che psychic totality attached to such a rhychmic cask. It is really the whole being that is engaged in play. It is in this play rather than in some form of suffering that the primitive being finds selfawareness, which in the firsc puce is self-confidence. The way we imagine is often more instructive than what we imagine. One has only to read the account of Bernardin de SaintPierre to be struck by the readiness-and consequently by the sympathy-wich which this writer "understands" the primitive method of obtaining fire by friction. Lost in the forest with Virginie, Paul wishes to give to his companion the "prickly

cabbage" which is at the tOp of a young palmetto or cabbage palm. But the tree defies the axe, and Paul has no knife! Paul thinks of setting fire (0 the base of the uee, but he has no tinder box. Moreover, on this rock-covered island there are no f1intstones to be found. We note these rapid sentences full of ideas and second thoughts which denote chat the various methods are being discarded as unfeasible. These sentences prepare psychoanalycically for the decision: I must resort to the method used by the blacks. This method will reveal itself as being so easy th:lt we are surprised at che hesications that preceded irs adoption. s

28

With the sharp corner of a stone he made a little hole in Q branch of well-dried wood and then placed this branch firmly beneath his feet; then wich the cutting edge of this stone he made a point on another branch thac was equally dry but of a different kind of wood. He then puc chis piece of pointed wood into the lirtle hole of the branch that was under his feet and made it rapidly revolve between his hands as one rolls or rotates a beater with wruch one wishes to whip up chocolate. In a very few moments he caused smoke and sparks to rise up from the poinc of contact. He gathered dry grasses and ocher branches and set fire to che foot of the palmetto tree, which, soon after, fell with a great crasb. He also made use of the fire to Strip off from the cabbage fruit its envelope of long, prickly, fibrous leaves. Virginie and he ate part of this cabbage raw and the ocher parr cooked under che embers and found both equally tasty . . . One will notice that Bernardin de Saine-Pierre recommends using cwo pieces of wood of a differ em nature. For a primitive mind this difference is of a sexual order. In his Voyage en Arcadie Bernardin de Sainr-Pierre will specify quite gratuitously the ivy and che laurel. We should also noce rhac che comparison of the rubbing stick and the beater used to whip up chocolate is found in the Physics of the Abbe Noller whose work Bernardin de Saim-Pierre, impelled by his scienrific precentions, used to rcad. This mixing of his dream and his reading is in itself symptomatic of a rationalization. Moreover, at no time does .the writer appear to have seen the illogical elemenrs in his story. An agreeable 19

l'sy choanalysis of Fire

[

fancy carries him along, his unconscious rediscovers (be joys of the first fire to be lit in a carefree atmosphere of mllCuallove. Furrhermore, it is quire easy co establish that the eurhythmy of an active rubbing motion, on condition thar it be sufficiemly gentle and prolonged, brings aboUt a euphoria. One has only (0 wait until the violent acceleration has setrled down, until the different rhythms are coordinated, to see the smile and the look of peace return to the face of rhe worker. This joy cannot be explained objecrively. It is rhe indication of a specific affective power. In this way is explained the joy of rubbing, cleaning, furbishing, and polishing that could not be adequately explalned by the meticulous care taken by certain housewives. Balzac has pointed out in Gobseck that the "cold houses" of old maids had some of the shiniest furniture. Psychoanalycically speaking, cleanliness is really a form of uncleanliness. In their parascientific theories, certain minds do not hesitate to accentuate the value given to the act of rubbing by going beyond the stage of solitary thoughcs of love consisting wholly of reverie until they reach the circumstances of shared physical love. J.-B. Robinet, whose books went through a great number of editions, wrote in 1766: "The flintstone that is being rubbed in order to make it luminous understands what is being demanded of it, and its brilliance proves its condescension . . . I cannor believe that minerals should do us so much good through their virtues without enjoying the sweet satisfaction, the gende satisfaction which is the first and greatest reward for beneficence." Opinions that are objectively so absurd must have a deep-rooted psychological cause. Sometimes Robinet breaks off his explanations for fear of "exaggerating." A psychoanalyst would say "for fear of betraying himself." But the exaggerarion is already quite obvious. It is a psychological fact that has to be explained. We do nOt have the right to overlook it, as would a history of science that was systematically devoted to objective results. To sum up then, we propose, as did C. G. lung, to seek out sysrematically the component elements of the Libido in all primitive activities. Indeed, it is not only in an that the Libido is sublimated. It is the source of all the works of homo faber.

The mark of a disdnctive ceremony is forever attached to the production of fire by friction. In the fire rituals that were so famous in the Middle Ages and are so universally in evidence among primitive tribes, a rerum is sometimes made co the initial custom, a fact which seems to prove (hat the birth of fire is the primary cause of its adoration. In Gerrnanja, according to A. Maury, the Nothfeuer or Nodfyr had to be lit by rubbing t'wo pieces of wood together. Chateaubriand gives us a long descripcion of the ceremony of the new fire among the Na(chez. On the night preceding the ceremony, the fire, which has been burning for a whole year, is allowed to go Oll(. Before dawn appears, the priest slowly rubsrwo pieces of wood Together while pronouncing in a low voice some magic words. \/\lhen the Sun

30

3I

Someone undoubtedly stated it very \vell when he defined man as: a hand and a language. But the useful gestures musr nor hide the agreeable gestures. The hand is the organ that caresses, juse as rhe voice is [he organ that sings. Primirively, caress and work must have been associated. Long tasks are rei:uively easy tasks. A traveller tells us about primitive men shaping obj ecrs on the polishing wheel in a work which might last for t\vo months. The more gende the rerouching instrument, the finer is the polish . In a somewhat paradoxical way wemighr well stare that the age of chipped stone is the age of the tormented stone, whereas the age of the polished stone is the age of (he caressed stone. The brutish man breaks the silex or flint, he does not work at it. The roan who works at the silex loves the silex, and one does not love stones any differently than one loves women. "Vhen we look at an axe of dressed flint, it is impossible to resist the idea that each well~placed facer was obtained by a reduction in force, by an inhibited, restrained, directed force, in short, by a psychoanalyzed force. With the polished stone, we pass from theincermittent caress to the continued caress, to (he gentle, the enveloping, the rhythmic and seductive movement. In any case, the man who works away with such patience is encouraged both by a memory and by a hope, and it is in the domain of the affective powers that we must look for the secret of his reverie.

Ps)' cho.m(//y_ris of Fire

Fsychoilnalysis and Prehistory

appears, [he priest spceds up the motion. "At that momcnr [he High Priest mters the sacred 'oah,' fire spurts forth from the wood which has been heated by the friction, the cinder which has been trcated with sulphur catches fire . . . The medicine man sets fire to the hoops of reed : the flame \vinds along following their spiral shapes. Pieces of oak bark are kindled upon the altar, and (his new fire then gives a new seed CO [he extinguished hearths of the village." 4 Thus rhis festival among the Natchez, which unires the Sun festival and the harvest festival, is above all a celebration of the seeding of the fire. In order rhat it may have all its force, rillS seeding must be seized in its first intensity, when it comeS fresh from the rubbing tool which causes the fire. The method of rubbing then appears as the natural method. Once again it is nacural because man accedes to it through bis own nature. In accual fact, fire waS detected within ourselves before it was snatched from the gods. Frazer gives numerous examples of bonfires that are kindled through friction. Among orhers the Scm(ish fires of Beltane were lit by forced fire or need-fire. s 'This was a fire produced exclusively by the rubbing of cwo pieces of wood against one another. As soon as the first sparks were emitted, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch trees and is very combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from heaven and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed it . . . a sovereign remedy against malignant diseases, both in men and in cattle . . ." One wonders to what "appearance" Frazer is alluding when he says that this forced fire descends directly from heaven. But on this point Frazer's whole system of explanation seems to us co be misdirected. Frazer indeed bases his explanations on utility. Thus from the bonfires are taken ashes which go to fertilize the fields of flax, wheat and barley. This first proof introduces a SOrt of unconscious rationalization which misleads a modern reader who is easily convinced of the usefulness of carbonates and other chemical fertilizers. But let us lo'ok more closely at how these facts lead us to profound and obscure values. These ashes from the forced fire are given not only to the land which is to yield the harvests, but

3re also mixed in with the cattle fodder to make the animals fat. Sometimes they are mixed in so that the cattle will multiply. ~ow rhe psychological reason for [he cusrom becomes obvious. -Y:Vhether an animal is being fed or fields are being fertilized, there is, over and above the evidenc utility, a more intimate dream, [he dream of fertility in its most se,,:u
31

33

Psychoanalysis of Fire

Psychoanalysis alld PrehistOry

man among the inhabitants of the "ilJ~ge who was l:m married? Frazer pictures all the young people "jumping over the glowing embers in order LO obtain a good harvest, or in order to make within the year a good marriage, or again in order LO avoid attacks of colic." Among these three motives is there nor one which for youch is clearly predominant? Vlhy is it "the youngest married woman of the village who is to jump over the fire?" Why, in Ireland, "when a girl jumps three eimes forwards and backwards over a fire, do they say that she will soon be married, that she will be happy and that she will have a great many children?" Why are certain young people "convinced that the Saint John's fire will not burn them?" Do they noc, in order to establish such a strange conviction, have an experience that is more intimate than objecrive? And how do the Brazilians place "red-hot coals in their moUths without burning themselves?" What then is this initial experience which inspired them with this audacity? Why do the Irish cause "co pass through the fires of the solstice those of their catde which were sterile?" And this legend of the valley of Lech is very clear also: "When a young man and a young woman jump together over one of these fires w.ithout being touched even by the smoke, they say thac the young woman will not be a mother during the year because the flames have neither touched her nor made he.r fertile." She has shown that she had the skill to play with fire without being burnt. Frazer wonders whether one could noc actach to this btter belief "the scenes of debauchery in which the Estonians engage on the day of the solstice." And yet, in a book in which he does not hesitate to pile up references, he gives no account of this igneous debauch. Nor does he feel ic necessary to give us a circumstantiated account of the fire festival in northern India, a festival "which is accompanied by singing and gesrnres which are licentious to the point of obscenity." This last remark indicates certain drawbacks in his methods of explanation. We could have cited a large number of questions which remain unanswered in Frazer's theory but which are easily resolved by the theory of the primitive sexualization of fire. Nothing can make us better understand the inadequacy of

sociological explanarions than :l parallel reading of Frazer's The G~lden Bougb and lung'S Libido. Even on an extremely prec~'ie pomtsuch as (he problem of the mistletoe, the insight of the psychoanalyst appears to be decisive. One will find, moreover, in Jung's book numerous arguments in support of our thesis concerning the sexual nature of rubbing and of primitive fire. vVe have merely systematized these arguments and added to them certain documents drawn from a mental zone which is less profound and therefore closer to that of objective knowledge.

shall not dwell upon the primitive mentalities studied by Frazer. We shall, therefore, give only a few examples to illuscrate the necessity for correcting the sociologist's interpretation by a psychoanalytical interpretation. Often the creator of fire is a little bird bearing on its tail a red mark which is the mark of fire. 10 one Australian tribe the legend is very amusing or, racher; .ic is because a bird is being amusing that it succeeds in stealing the nre. "The deaf adder had fonnerly the sale possession of fire, which he kept securely in his inside. All the birds tried in vain to gec some of it, until the small hawk came along and played such ridiculous antics that the adder could noc keep his countenance and began to laugh. Then the fire escaped from him and became common property." 8 Thus, as is often the case, the legend of fire is the leaend of ~ licentious love. Fire is associated with innumerable jokes. In many cases the fire is stolen. The Prometheus complex is dispersed over all the animals in creation. The one stealing the fire is most ofcen a bird, a wren, a robin, a hummingbird, some small creature. Sometimes it is a rabbit, a badger, or a fox who carries off the fire at the end of its tail. Elsewhere women fight one another: "finally one of the women breaks her cudgel and immediately there comes forth from it fire." Fire is also produced by an old woman who "vented her rage by breaking off two

34

35

That particular book of Frazer which is entitled Myths of the Origin of Fire reveals on each page such obviously se:x.-ual marks that a psychoanalysis of it is really unnecessary. Since our

aim in this short book is rather to study modern mentalities, we

Psychoanalysis of Fire

sticks from the trees and rubbing them violendy wgether." j On several occasions the creation of fire is associated 'with a similar act of violence; fire is the objective phenomenon of an inner rage, of a hand which has become irritable. I~ is thus quite notewonhy that we always come upon an exceptlonal psychological condition that is strongly tinged wit~ ~.ffec~ivity at the origin of an objective cliscovery. We can. dlsnngUlsh then between many kinds of fire--gencle fire, cunnmg fire, unruly fireby characterizing them according (0 the initial psychology of the desires and passions. An Ausualian legend recalls that a totemic animal, a certain euro, carried fire within its body. A man killed it. "He examined the body carefully to see how the animal made fire, ~r wher~ it carne from; and pulling out the male organ of gener~oon, w?ich was of great length, he cut it open and found that It contaJ.ne? very red fire." 8 How could such a legend be perpetuated ~ It were not that each generation had its intimate reasons to belIeve in it? In another uibe

Psycbv ,m:1ly,is

~7.Id

PTllhi.,tory

1n a South-American myth, [he hero, in order to gec fire, pursues a woman:

He sprang up and seized her. He said that he would embrace her if she did not reveal to him the secret of fire. After several evasions, she consented to do so. She sat flat on the floor with legs wide apart. Taking hold of the upper part of her abdomen she gave it a good shake and a ball of fire rolled out of the genital canal on the floor . This was not toe fire thac we know today; it would not burn nor make things boil. These properties were lost when the woman gave it up. Ajijeko said, however, that he could remedy that; so he gathered all the bark, fruits, and hor peppers which burn, and with these and the woman's fire he made the fire that we now use. tO

In studying such a story, one must admit the total impossibility of the realistic explanation, whereas the psychoanalytical explanation is, on the contrary, immediately clear. It is quite evident, indeed, that one cannot hide real fire, objective fire, within the human body, as so many myths claim. It is equally aue that it is only on [he emotional level that one can lie with such effrontery and say, in the face of all the evidence, and by denying the most intimate form of desire, "There is no fire."

This example affords us definite evidence of the passing over from metaphor to reality. It should be noticed tillIt this transition does not take place, as the realist explanation would have it, from reality to metaphor, bur, in quite the opposite manner and in accord with the theory we are supporting, it proceeds from metaphors of subjective origin to an objective reality: the fire of love and the fire of pepper joined together end by setting fire to the dry grasses. It is this absurdity which explains the discovery of fire. Generally speaking, one cannot read the rich and intensely interesting book of Frazer without being struck by the poverty of the realist explanation. There must be at least a thousand legends that are studied in the book and only two or three of these are explicitly connected with sexuality. For the rest, in spite of the undeilying affective meaning, one might imagine that the myth has been created for the purpose of affording objective explanations. Thus, "the Hawaiim myth of the origin of fire, like many of the Australian myths of the same type, also serves to explain the particular color of a certain species of bird." Elsewhere the theft of fire by a rabbit served to explain the reddishbrown or black color of its tail. Such explanations, hypnotized by an objective detail, fail to take ineo account the primitivity of the affective interest. The primitive phenomenology is a phenomenology of affectivity: it fabricates objective beings out of

36

37

. the men had no fire and did not know how to make it, bue the women did. While che men were away hunting in the bush, the women cooked their food and ace it by themselves. Just as they were finishing their meal, they saw the meo returning away in the disranee. As chey did not wish the men to know about the fire, they hastily gathered up the ashes, which were still alight, and thrust them up their vulvas, so thac the men should not see them. When the men came close up they said: "Where is the fire?" but the women replied: "There is no fire." 9

Psy choanalysis of Fire

Psychoanalyri.f and PrehiStory

phantoms that are projected by reverie, it creares images ou( of desires, material experiences OUE of somatic experiences, and fire oue of love.

And on all (he places over which passed me hand of me servants there broke through [he entrancing light with which the whoLe palace shone in such a marvellous manner . . .

The Romantics, by returning to certain more or less permanent experiences of primitiveness, rediscovered, withom suspecting ie, those themes of fire that have been accorded a sexual value. G. H. von Schubert, for example, has written this sentence which only becomes clear in the light of a psychoanalysis of fire: H ."Just as friendship prepares us for love, so by the rubbing together of similar bodies, nostalgia (heat) is created and love (flame) SPUrtS forth." How can it be better stated that nostalgia is the memory of the warmth of the nest, the memory of the cherished love for the "calidum innatum." The poetry of the nest, of the fold, has no other origin. No objective impression acquired by examining the nests in a row of bushes could ever have supplied the wealch of adjectives which confer such a value upon the coziness, the sweetness, and the warmth of the nest. Were it not for the memory of man made warm by man, producing as it were a redoubling of natural heat, we could not conceive of lovers speaking of their snug little nest. Gentle heat is thus at the source of the consciousness of happiness. More precisely, it is the consciousness of the origins of happiness. AU of Navalis' poetry could receive a new interpre.cation, if we would apply to it the psychoanalysis of fire. This poetry is an attempt to re-live primitivity. For Novalis, the Story is always more or less a cosmogony (theory of the formation of the universe). It is contemporaneous with a soul and a world that are being created. He maineains that the Story is "the era . . . of liberty, the primicive state of nature, the age before the Cosmos." 12 Here, then, in all his obvious ambivalence, we see the rubbing god who is going to produce both fire and love: the beautiful daughter of King Arctur . . . lying on silken cushions, was reclining on a throne artistically carved from an enormous sulphur crystal; and some maid servants were energetically rubbing her delicate limbs which seemed a blend of milky whiteness and crimson. 38

This light is an inward light. The person being caressed shines with happiness. The Caress is none other than the act of rubbing symbolized and idealized. But the scene continues: The hero remained silent. "Let me touch your shield," she said sweetly, and as he consented ... his whole armor vibrated; and an enlivening force nm through his whole body. His eyes flashed; his heart could be heard beating beneath its cuirass. The beautiful Freya seemed more serene; and more burning did the light become which was emanating from her. "The King is coming!" cried a wonderfuL bird ...

If we add that this bird is the "phoenix," the phoenix which is reborn from its ashes, like a desire that has been momentarily appeased, we see, moreover, that this scene is marked by the double primitivity of fire and of love. If we sei the beloved on fire when we love, this is proof that we ourselves loved when we kindled this fire. "When Eros,rransported with joy, saw that he was in front of the sleeping Freya, suddenly a sharp sound was heard. A powerful spark had run from the princess co his sword." The exact psychoanalytical image would have led Novalis to say "from the sword to the princess." In any case; "Eros dropped his sword. He ran to the princess and imprinted a kiss of fire on her cool lips." 18 If from the work of Navalis we struck out the intuitions of primitive fire, it seems that all the poetry and dreams would be dissipated at the same time. The case of Novalis is so characteristic that ie could be made the type example of a particular complex. In the field of psychoanalysis the naming of things is often sufficient to cause a precipitate; before ehe name, there D

39

PrychoG?]((lysis of Fire

was only an amorphous, troubled, disturbed solution; afrer the name, crystals are seen at the bonom of the liquid. The N ovalis complex would synthesize, then, this impulse toW;l(ds fire th~t is brought about by friction, the need for a shared warmth. ThLS impulse would reconsticutc, in its exact primi~ivity, the :prehistoric conquest of fire. The Navalis complex 1S charactenzed by a consciousness of inner heat which always takes preceden~e over a purely visual knowledge of light. It is based upon. a saosfaction of thc thermal sense and the deep-seated consclOusness of calorific happiness. Heat is a property, a possession. It must be guarded jealously and only given as a gift to a chosen being who merits its communion in a reciprocal fusion. Light plays upon and laughs over the surface of things, but only heat penetrates. In a letter to Schlegel, Navalis wrote: "You can see in my tale my antipathy for the play of light and shadow, and the desire for bright. hot, penetratmg Ether." This need to penetrate, to go to the interior of things, to the interior of beings, is one artraction of the intuition of inner heat. Where the eye cannot go, where the hand does not enter, there heat insinuates itself. This communion at the interior, this thennal sympathy, will, in the work of Navalis, find its symbol in the descent .inw the depths of the mountain, into the grotto and the mine. It is there that the heat is diffused and equalized, ihat it becomes indistinct like the contour of a. dream . As Nodier has very well recognized, every description of a descent into ~ell has a dream suucture. u Novalis has dreamed of the watm lrtrimacy of the earth as others dream of a cold, resplendent, expanding sky. For the miner is an "astrologer in rev:rse." Novalis lives w.ith a concentrated heat rather than WIth a luminous radiation. How often he has meditated "on the edge of the dark abysses!" He is not the poet of minerals because he was a mining engineer; he became an engineer, although a poet, in order to obey the call of the subterranean, in order to return to the "calidum innatum." In his words, the miner is the hero of the depths, prepared "m receive the divine gifts and to exalt himself joyfully above the world and its miseries." The miner sings of the Earth: "To Her he feels bound-and intimately united

rum

Psycholl7lalysis

~lld

Prc/JistOry

-and for Her he feels the same ardor as for a fianc~e." The Earth is the maternal bosom, warm as a mother's lap in the unconscious mind of the child. The same heat animates both the rock and the miner's heart. "One would say that the miner has in his veins the inner fire of the earth which excites him co ex~ plore irs depths." At the center are the seeds; at (he center is the engendering fire. That which germinates bums. That which burns germinates. " '1 need .. . flowers rha.t have grown in the Fire . . . Zinc!' cried the King.15 'Give us flowers .. .' The gardener stepped our of rhe ranks, went to fetch a pac filled with Barnes and sowed in it a shining seed. It was no(]ong before the flowers sprang forth . . . " Perhaps a positive-minded person will undertake co develop here a pyrotechnical interpretation. He will show us the brilliant flame from the zinc projeCting the white and dazzling flakesof its oxide into the air. He will write down the oxidation formula. But this objective interpretation, while it discovers a chemical cause of the phenomenon that fills us with wonder, will nev~r take us to the center of the image, to the kernel of the Novahs complex. This interpreration will even deceive us as to what kj~ds of imagery take precedence in the poet's mind; for, by followmg this particular interpretacion, we shall not understand that for a poet like Novalis the need [0 feel dominates the need to see, and that ahead of the light of Gcethe there must be placed the gentle, indistinct heat chat is ino-ramed in all the fibres of the being. No doubt there . :re more subdued toneS in the work of Navalis . Often love gives way to nostalgia JUSt as it does in the work of von Schubert; but the mark of heat is indelibly stamped upon it. You may also obieet that Navalis is the poet "of the little blue flower," the poet of rhe forget-me-not tossed as a pledge of imperishable memory over the edge of the precipice in the very shadow of death. But go down into the depths of the unconscious, find there wirh the poet the primitive dream and you will clearly see the truth: the little blue flower is red!

40

/

I

CHAPTER FOUR

Sexualized Fire

If the conquest of fire was originally a sexual "conquest," it is not surprising chat fire should have remained so strongly sexualized for such a long petiod of time. As a result fire has received a whole series of values which greatly ineerfere with any objective investigations inco the subject. Thus, before dealing with the chemistry of fire in the next chapter, we shall fust demonstrate the necessity for a psychoanalysis of ' objective knowledge. The sexualized values that we wish to expose may be either hidden or explicit. Naturally it is the secret and obscure v3J.oes which are most proof against psychoanalysis, but at the same time they are the mose active. Openly acknowledged sexual values are immediately reduced by ridicule. In order that we may indicate clearly the resistance offered by the deeply hidden unconscious values, we shall give some examples in which this resistance is so weak chat the reader can smilingly make the re,.. ducrion himself without our having to call attention to the obvious errors. In the opinion of Robinef [writing in the mid-eighteenth century], elementary fire is capable of reproducing its own kind. This is a hackneyed, valueless expression that usually passes unH

Psycho.171alysis o f TiTe

Sexu,lJized Ftre

noticed. But Robinet ascribes to it its strong, primary meaning. He thinks that the element of fire is horn of a specific germ. Thus, like any power which engenders, fire can be stricken wich sterility as soon as it reaches a certain age. From now on, withom apparently having any knowledge of tales concerning (he festival of new fire or of restored fire, Robinet, in his reverie, will rediscover the genetic necessity for fire. If fire is left to live its natural life, even though it be fed, it grows old and dies like planes and animals. ~amrally the various fires must bear the indelible mark of their own individuality: 2 "Common fire, elecuical fire, the fires of phosphorus, of volcanoes and of thunderbolts have essemial, intrinsic differences that it is natural to ascribe to a more internal principle than to mere accidents that may be presumed to have modified the same igneous matter." There can be seen already at work the intuition of a substance that is understood as having an intimacy and a life of its own and will soon be attributed its own power of generation. Robinet continues: "Each thunderbolt could well be the effect of a new production of igneous Beings, which, increasing rapidly in size, because of the abundance of vapors which feed them,are collected by the winds and carried back and forth through the middle regions of the atmosphere. The many new volcanoes in Ameriq, the new eruptions of the old craters; also give proof of the productiveness and the fecundity of the subterranean fires." Certainly this fecundity is not a metaphor. It muSt be taken in its most precise sexual meaning. These igneous beings, born of the Thunderbolt, in 3 , Rash of lighming, escape observation. But Robinet claims to have precise observations at his disposal : 3 "Hooke, having semele a flint over a sheet of paper and having examined with a good microscope the spots where the sparks had fallen, which were marked by little black specks, observed there some r01,lnd and shiny atoms, although the naked eye could see nothing. They were little shiny wonns." Does not the life of the fire, made up entirely of sparks and sudden Rickerings, remind us of the life of the am heap? "At the slightest incident, the ants can be seen swarming tumultuously

out of their underground dwelling: similarly, at the slightest shock to the piece of phosphorus, the igneous animalculae can be seen to collect and come forth with a luminous appearance." Finally, life alone is capable of supplying a profound inner reason for the obvious individuality of colors. To explain the seven colors of the spectrum Robinet does not hesitate to propose "seven ages or periods in the life of the igneous aoimalculae . . . These animals, in passing through the prism, will each be obliged to suffer refraction according to its Strength and age and ehus each will bear its own color." Is it not true that the dying fire turns red? For anyone who has tried to Start up a lazy fire by blowing on it there is a very clear distinction between the recalcitrant fire which is dying down to a red glow and the young fire which, as an alchemist puts it so prettily, striv:s to attain "the brilliant redness of the rustic poppy." Faced wlth a dying fire, the man who is doing the blowing becomes discouraged; he no longer feels sufficient ardor to communicate his own power to the fire. If he is a realist like Robinet, he realizes his discouragement and his impotency; he makes a phantom of his own fatigue. Thus the mark of changeable man is placed upon things. That which diminishes or increases within ourselves becomes the sign of a life th;lt is either stifled or fully awakened within reality. A poetic communion of such a nature lays ~he groundwork for the most tenacious errors as far as obJecuve knowledge is concerned. Moreover, as we have so often remarked, it would be necessary only to put this intuition, whi~h is so .ridiculous in th: ~or~ given by Robinet, into a vague and 1illpreCISe form, to pOetIClZe 1t and restore its subjective meaning, in order [0 have it accepted without difficulty. Thus, if these aruma ted forms of color are regarded as powers imbued with an ardent or waning life, .if they are created, not on the axis which proceeds from the obJects to the eye, but on the axis of the passionate glance which proj ects a desire and a love, then they become the varied shades of love itself. Thus it is that Navalis can write: 4 "A ray of light can also be broken into something quite different from colors. At any rate the ray of light is capable of being endowed with life

44

45

p

p

. 2_...,

Psy cho ,7?lalysis of Fire

Se.r:u.llized Fire

that the soul meeting it feels itself assailed by many shades of feeling. In this respect do we not think of the rays from the eyes of our beloved?" If we reflect a moment, we ,vill realize that Robinet merely accentuates and makes heavy an image that Navalis will tone down and restore to its ethereal form; but, in the unconscious, the two images appear to be of the same species, and the objective parody of Robiner merely enlarges the features of the inner reverie of Navalis. This parallel, which will seem incongruous to poetic souls, helps us, however, to make a reciprocal psychoanalysis of two dreamers placed at the antipodes of reality. It affords us an example of those forms mixed with desires which can produce poems as well as philosophies. The philosophy may be bad even though the poems are beautiful.

as considerable a blaze as if YOll had at once lit it with a fiery torch:; That is the story of generation: the most delicate mm provides sufficient fire to bring about generation, and, in the act of copul9.tion, his fire is just as potent as rh:1t of the much stronger man.

SO

Now that we have given an illustration of an erroneous interpretation of the animistic and sexualized intuicion of fire, we shall doubtless have a becrer understanding of the futility of those assertions thar are constantly being repeated as eternal truths: nre is life; life is a fire. In other words we wish to denounce rhis false assurance which claims to connectfue and life. At the source of this assimilation, there is, we believe, the impression that the spark, like the seed, isa small cause which produces a great effect. Hence an intense value is ascribed to the myth orthe igneous power. But let us begin by showing the equation of the seed and the spark and ler us realize that, through the interplay of inextricable reciprocals, the seed is a spark and the spark is a seed. The one does not go without the other. When two intuicions are linked together as these are, the mind believes it is thinking, even though it is moving only from one. metaphor to another. A psychoanalysis of objective knowledge consists precisely of throwing light upon these loose transpositions. In our opinion, one has merely to place them beside one another to See that they have no real foundation, but simply rest upon one another. Here is an example of that easy assimilation that we are criticizing: 5

And to think that such comparisons could satisfy these muddled thinkers! In point of fact, far from helping to understand phenomena, they constitute true obstacles to scientific culture. Towards the same date, in 177 I, a medical doctor develops a lengthy theory of human fertilization based on fire considered as a supreme possession and a generating force:6 The depression which follows the emission of the spermatic fluid at least indicates to us that at this moment we are undergoing the loss of an extremely ardent and active liquid. Should we place the blame upon the loss ofa sma.lI quantity of that marrowy, palpable juice that is contained in the seminal vesicles? Would the bodily organism, for which it was already as if non~ex.istem:, immediately take note of the loss of such a humor? The answer is undoubtedly no. But it is not the same with the fiery substance of which We have only a certain amount and with which all the vital centers are in direct communication . . . Thus to lose flesh, marrow, juice and fluid is of littleimponance. To lose the fire, the seminal fire, that is the great sacrifice. This sacrifice alone can engender life. One can see, moreover, how easily the unquestioned value of fire can be established. Authors who are no doubt second-rate, but who for that very reason reveal to us more naively the sexual inruitions that have been attributed an unconscious value, sometimes develop a whole sexual theory based on themes that are specifically connected with heat-thereby proving the initial confusion that existed between the intuirions of semen and fire. Doctor PierreJean Fabre, in 1636, thus sets forch his theory as to the birth of male and female children:

Let an enormous pile of charcoal be lighted with the feeblest kind 'of light, a dying spark ... , two hours l\lter will it not form just

If the semen, which is one and the same in all its parts and of an identical constirution, is divided in the womb and one pare withdrawn to the right and the other to the Jeft side, the mere fact of

46

47

..... L

Sc:ruabd Ere

Psycboanalysis of Fire ~he division of the semen causes such a difference in

it ... not only form and figure, but in sex, that one side will be male and the other female . And it is from that pan: of the semen which has withdrawn [0 the right side, as being the part of the body which is hotter and more vigorous, which will have maintained the force and the vigor and heat of the semen, that: a male child will come forth; and the other parr, since it has retired to the left side which is the colder part of the human body, will then have received cold qualities which will have much diminished and lessened the vigor of the semen, so that from it there will come forth the female child which, however, in its first origin was aU male. 7 In

fort comes from a cordial. Every cordial is an aphrodisiac to the unconscious mind. Fabre does not think it impossible that "through proper food, conducive to building up ;) hot and dry ~onsritution, the feeble heat of females may become so strong ehat It may be enabled to thrust outward the parts which its weakness had kept back within." For "women are men in a latent state because they have the male elements hidden within them" How better can it be stated tha[ the principle of fire is the male accivity and that rhis wholly physical activity, like an erection, is the principle of life? The image that men are merely women dilated by heat is easy to psychoanalyze. We should also note the loose association of the confused ideas of heat, food, and generation; those who wish male children "will endeavor to nourish themselves with all the good, hoc, and igneous foods." Fire governs the motal qualities as well as the physical. The shrewdness of a man comes from his hot temperament. "Here the Physiognomiscs are excellent; for when they see a thin man of a dry disposition, with a moderate-sized head, shining eyes, chesmut or black hair, and of average height and squarely built, they then declare chac this man is prudent and wise and full of wit and shrewdness." On the other hand,

Before proceeding any further, need we call attention to the complete gratuitousness of such assertions, which have not the slightest relarion to any objective experience whatsoever? One cannot even discover a pretext for this in external observation. Consequently where does such nonsense originate if noc in an improper evaluation of the subjective phenomena attributed to fire? Fabre, moreover, substantializes by means of fire all the qualities of strength, courage, ardor and virility. "Women, because of this cold and humid con~titution, are less strong than men, more. timid and less courageous, because of the face chac strength; · courage and action come from fire and air, which are the active elem-ems; and therefore they are called male elements; and the other elements, ,vater and earth, are called passive and female elements." By bringing together so many of these ridiculous statements, we have uied to illustrate a state of mind which fully realizes the most insignificant metaphors. Nowadays, since the scientific mind has changed structure several times, it has become accustomed to such numerous transpositions of meaning that it is less often a victim of its own expressions. All the scientific concepts have been redefined. In our conscious lives we have broken off direct contact with the original etymologies. But the prehistoric mind, and a fortiori the unconscious, does not detach the word from the thing. If it speaks of a man as being full of fire, it wills something to be hurriing within him. If necessary, this fire will be kept burning by a drink. Every impression of com-

Like any form of wealth, fire is dreamed of in its concentrated form. The dreamer wishes to enclose ic in a small space the better to guard it. One whole type of reverie brings us back to a medication on the concentrated. It is the revenge of the small over the great, che hidden over the manifest. To sustain a reverie of this kind, a prescientific mind, as we have JUSt seen, causes che most incongruous images to come together-the dark-haired

48

49

. . . .the big call men are humid and mercurial; shrewdness, made up of WISdom and prudence, is never at its highest degree in these men; for the fire from whence come wisdom and prudence is never v!gorous in such large and vast bodies, since it is wandering and diffused; and nothing in nature that is scattered and diffused is ever srrong and powerful. Force needs ro be compact and compressed; the strength of fire is seen to be all the stronger when it is compressed and contracted. Cannons demonstrate this fact . . .

Ps),chO.11wiysis of Fire

tion which spoke of a water or an earth e/e'mented by fire, of a substance that was embryo11ized by sulphur. But as long as one does not give a precise indication of this element, or a detailed description of the various phases of this elementation, one has the dual advantage of the touch of mystery and the force of the primitive image. If we next treat the fire which animates OUI heart and that which animates the world as being one and the same, it will now appear that our feeling of communion with things is so powerful and primitive that precise criticism is disarmed. But whae are we really to think of a philosophy of the element which claims it is not subject to precise criticism and is satisfied wich a general principle which, in each specific case, reveals itself to be heavily charged with primitive fallacies l1nd as naive asa lover's dream?

man and the cannon. As an almost constam rule, lt is in the reverie about whar is small and concenrratcd and not in the reverie aboUt what is largc that the mind that has long been pondering over things finally discovers the path which leads to sciencific thought. In any case, the thought of fire, more than the thought of any other principle, follows the inclination of this type of reverie to dream of a concenrrated power. In the world of objects, it is the homologue of the love reverie in the heart of a taciturn man. That fire is the principle of all seed appears so true to a prescientific mind that the slightest external appearance is enough to prove it: thus for Count de La C6pede: 8 "The seminal dusts of planes are highly inflammable substances . . . that put forth by (he plant named the lycopodium is a kind of sulphur." This is an assertion of a chemistry of surface and color that the slightest experiment carried OUt by an objective chemistry of the substance would have contradicted. At times fire is the formal principle of individuality. An alchemist writing a lettre philosophique published in r 72 3 as a cominuation to the . Cosmopolite, explains to us that fire is not, properly speaking, a body, but rather the male principle which vitalizes the female substance. This female substance is water. Water in its elemental state "was cold, humid, crass, impure and murky, and in creation held the place of the female, just as fire, whose innumerable sparks could be likened (0 different males, contained all the shades required for the procreation of particular individuals. We can ca.ll this fire the form, and the water the substance, both of which are mixed together in the original chaos." 9 And the author refers us to Genesis. Here may be recognized in its obscure form the intuition made ridiculous by the precise images of Robinet. Thus we can see that as error becomes cloaked by the unconscious, as it loses its precise outline, it becomes more acceptable. It would require only one further step in this direction (0 acta in the gende safety of philosophical metaphors. To assert that fite is an element is, ih our opinion, to set up sexual resonances; it is thinking of the substance in its propagation, in its generation; it is rediscovering the alchernistic inspira-

We have tried to show in a previous book 1o that all Alchemy was penetrated by an immense sexual reverie, by a reverie of wealth and rejuvenation, by a reverie of power. \Ve would now like to demonstrate that this sexual reverie is a fireside reverie. One could even say that alchemy realizes purely and simply the sexual characteristics of the fireside reverie. Far from being a description of the objective phenomena, it is an attempt (0 inscribe human love ac the heart of things. What maya( first sight hide ics psychoanalytical character is the fact that alchemy quickly took on an abstract aspect. The alGhemists worked wich the enclosed fire, the fire confined in a furnace. The images which are created so lavishly by open flames and which lead to a more free and winged kind of reverie, were now reduced and decolorized to the benefit of a more precise and concentrated dream. Let us then take a look at the akhemist at work beside his furnace in his underground workshop. It has already been noted many times that several of the furnaces and retorts used by the alchemistS had undeniable sexual shapes. Some amhors explicitly point this ouc. Nicolas de Locques, "the spagyric doctor to His Majesty," writes in r66S,1l "To whiten, digest, and thicken as in the preparation and confection of the Magisteries, the alchemists caleea recipient in the

50

51

PsychoaJl.7iysis of Fire

S;:;;ua/ized Fire

form. of ehe Breasts or in the form of the Testicles for [he producnon of the masculine and feminine seed in the Animal, and they call [his recipient a Pelican." 12 Of course this symbolic homology between the different alchemical containers and the different pares of the human body was generally prcvalcm, as we have pointed om elsewhere. BUl it is perhaps from the sexual aspect that this homology is clearest and most convincing. Here ehe fire, confined in (he sexual retort, has been seized at its primary source: it then has its entire efficacy. The technique, or rather the philosophy, of fire in (he art of alchemy is, moreover, dominated by well-defined sexual specifications. According (0 an anonymous author writing at the end of the seventeenth century:13 There are

From the calorific paine of view, the sexual distinction is 9uite c~ea~ly complementary. The feminine principle of things IS a pnnclple pertaining to surface and outer covering, a lap, a refuge, a gentle warmth. The masculine principle is a principle of the center, a principle of power, active and sudden as the spark a~d the power of wi~. The feminine heat attacks things from WIthout. The masculIne heat attacks chern from within, ae th~ very heart of the essential being. Such is the profound meanmg of the alchemist's reverie. Moreover, to gain a clear understanding of this sexualization of the alchemist's fires and the clearly predominant value attached to the action of the masculine fire upon the germ, we must not lose siO'ht of the fact that alchemy is uniq?ely a science engaged ; ' by men, by bachelors, by men WIthout women, by lrutiares cut off from nor~al human relationships in favor of a strictly masc1,lline soclety. Alchemy does nor receive. the influence of the feminine rever~e directly. Its docrrine of fire is thus strongly polarized by unsamfied demes. This inner, masculine fire, the object of the meditacion of the lonely ~an, is ~at~rally considered to be the most powerful fue. In paracular It 15 the fire which can "open bodies." An anonymous author writing at the beginning of theeighteenrh ~entury presents very clearly value placed upon the fue that 15 confined within matter. "Art, in imitation of Nature opens a body by means of fire, but uses a much stronger fire 'than the Fire that is produced by the fire of confined flames." The super?re prefigures the su~errnan. Conversely, the superman, in his ~ra~lOnal form,. conceIved of in order to claim a uniquely subJecnve power, is scarcely more than a superfire. . !his ,"opening" of bodies, this possession of bodies from Wlthin, thl5 total possession, is sometimes an obvious sexual act. I~ is, perfonned, as certain alchemists say, with the Rod of Fire. SImilar expressions and the figures which abound in certain books on .alchemy leave no doubt as to the meaning of this kind of possesslOn. ~hen fire is perfor~gobscure functions, it is really surpnsmg that the sexual unages should remain so clear. Indeed

. . . three sorts of fire, the natural, the. "innatural" and the unnatural. The natural is the masculine fire, the principal agent; but in order to obtain it the Artist must take great pains and use all his knowledge; for it is so torpid and so Strongly concentrated within metals that it cannot be set into action without persistent effore. The "innatural" fire is [he feminine fire and the universal dissolvent, nourishing bodies and covering with its wings the nudity of Nature. h: is no less difficult to obrain than the 'natural fire. This feminine fire appears in the form of a white smoke, and it often happens that in this form it may dj~ppear because of the negligence of the ~rtis~s. It: is almost impalpable, although, through physical sublimanon, It appears to be corporeal and resplendent:. The unnatural fire is that which corrupts the chemical <:ompound and which first has the power of dissolving that which Nature had strongly joined together ...

Need we call attencion to the feminine sign attached to smoke. "the inconstant wife of the wind," as Jules Renard calls it? Is not every veiled apparition considered feminine by virtue of this fundamental principle of unconscious sexualization: all that is hidden is feminine? The white lady who haunts the valley comes to visit the alchemist at night, beautiful as the imprecise image. changeable as a dream, fugitive as love itself. For a brief moment she enfolds the sleeping man in her caress: a toO sudden breath and she evaporates. . . . So the chemist misses his reaction. 51

me

53

... PsychOCI17(/lyris of Fire

the persistence of these images, in areas in wh~c~ dire~t symbolization remains confused, proves the sexual ongm of Ideas about fire. To realize this we need only to read in the books on alchemy the long account of the marriage o~ Fire and. Earth: Y':'T e can explain this marriage from three pomts of Vlew: ~n ~tS material meaning, as historians of chemistry always do; m Its poetic meaning as do literary critics; in its origio~l and unconscious meaning, as we propose CO do here. ~et us bfl~g these three explanations to bear 00 one particular pomt by takmg the often quoted alchemic lines: If the fixed body you can dissolve,

And cause the solute then to rise, And fix in a powder what has risen, For your pains you'll be consoled. We can easily find chemical examples which wi~l illustra~e the phenomenon of an earth (chemical substance) dlssol~ed 10 solution which is then sublimated by distilling the solu[1on. !f we "then clip the wings of the spirit," if we sublimate, we will have a pure salt, tbe sky of the terrestrial mixture (as. the alchemists describe the essence of the substance). We will have effected a material marriage of sky and earth. According to the beautiful and meaningful expression we now have "Uranogaea, the Sky terra-fied or made earth." N ovalis will carry over the same theme into the world of amorous dreams: 14 "Who knows if our love will not some day become wings of flame which will carry us away into our heavenly land before old age and death can overt~ke us." But t~ vague aspiration has irs opposite, and, in NovallS, Fable sees trus clearly "looking through the fissure in the rock . . . at Perseus with his great iron buckler; the scissors flew of their own accord towards the buckler, and Fable begged him to clip the wings of the Spirit with these scissors, then, by means of his shield,to deign to immortalize the sisters and. complet~ the gr:at ,:"ork . . . (Then) there is no longer any flax to spm. The mammate is once more without a soul. The animate will reign henceforth 54

Se.1:t:1liz~d

Fire

and will mold and make use of the inanimate. The interior is revealed and rhe c:\(erior is hidden." Beneath this rather strange poetry, u·hich has no direct appeal to classical taste, there is in chis page the profound trace of a sexual meditation of fire. Afrer the desire, the flame must come forth, the fire mUSt reach completion and the destinies be fulfilled. To do this the alchemist and the pocc reduce and restrain the burning action of the light. They separate the sky from the earth, the ash from the sublimate, the outside from the inside. And when the hour of happiness is over, Tourmaline, the gentle Tourmaline, "carefully gathers the he:lped-up ashes." Sexualized fire is preeminend y the connecting link for all symbols. It unites matter and spirit, vice and virtue. It idealizes materialistic knowledge; it materializes idealistic knowledge. It is the principle of an essential ambiguity which is not without charm, bue which mUSt be continually recognized and psychoanalyzed in order that we may criticize both the materialists and the idealists: "I am manipulating," says the Alchemist. "No, you are dreaming." "I am dreaming," says Navalis. "No,. yo~ are manipulating." The reason for such a profound duality 15 that fire is within us and outside us, invisible and dazzling, spirit and smoke.

If fire is so misleading and ambiguous, one should begin any psychoanalysis of objective knowledge by a psych~analysis of the intuitions concerning fire. We are almost certam that fire is precisely the first object, the first phenomenon, on whi~h the human mind reflected; among all phenomena, fire alone IS sufficiently prized by prehistoric man to wake in him the desire for knowledge, and this mainly because it accompanies the desire for love. No doubt it has often been stated that the conquest of fire definitely separated man from the animal, but perhaps it has not been noticed that the mind in its primitive state, together with its poetry and its knowledge, had been developed i~ m~di­ tation before a fire. Homo faber is the man of surfaces, his mmd is fixed on a few familiar objects, on a few crude geometric forms. For him the sphere has no center, it is simply the objective B

55

,

z Psychoanaiysis of Fire

Se Xi! .Jii-;.;:;j Fi re

counterpart of the rounding gesture he makes with his cupped hands. On the other hand the dreaming man scated before his fireplace is the man concerned wi[h inner depths, a man in the process of development. Or perhaps it would be better to say that fire gives to the man concerned with inner depths the lesson of an inner essence which is in a process of development: the flame comes forth from the heart of the burning branches. And thus we have this inmition of Rodin, quoted without comment by Max Scheler, doubtless because he failed to see its clearly primitive character: 15 "Each thing is merely the limit of the fiame to which it owes its existence." Were .it not for our conception of the inner, formative fire, of fire understood as the source of our ideas and our dreams, of fire considered as a seed, the usual concept of an objective and completely destructive flame could not explain the profound intuition of Rodin. In meditating upon this intuition, we realize that Rodin is, as it were, the sculptor of the inner depths and that he has managed in some way, in spite of the strict requirements of his art, to bring the inner features to the surface like the projection of a life, or a flame. In view of these findings we should no longer be surprised that works dealing with fire ,should be so easily sexualized. D'Annunzio portrays Stelio who, in the glass works, is can'" templating, in the annealing oven,

Bur a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge must go beyond this. It must recognize That fire is tbe fiHt cawe of the phenomenon. Indeed, we cannor speak of a world of the phenomenon, of a world of the appearances, except in the presence of a world which changes in its appearances. Now, from the primitive poim of view, only (hose changes that are caused by fire are the deep, striking, swift, marvellous and definitive changes. The alternation of night and day, the interplay of light and shadow, are superficial and fleecing aspects which do nor disrurb to any extent the routine knowledge of objecrs. The fact of their alternauon nullifies theif causal nature, as philosophers have pointed out. If the day is the father and the cause of night, the night is the mother and the cause bf day. Movement itself arouses scarcely any reflection. The human mind did not begin its development like a class in physics. The fruit that falls and the stream that flows present no enigma to a primitive mind. Primitive man contemplates the brook without tlUnking: As a drowsy shepherd watches the water flow by.

Thus "the eminent dignity of the arts of fire" arises from the fact that their products bear the most profoundly human mark, the mark of primitive love. They are the works of a father. The forms created by fire are modelled more than any other, as Paul Valery has so well pointed out, "in order to be caressed." 17

But the changes wrought by fire are changes in substance: that which has been licked by fire has a different taste in the mouths of men. That which fire has shone upon retains as a result an ineffaceable color. That which fire has caressed, loved, adored, has gained a store of memories and lost its innocence. In slang "flambe" is synonomous with "dead and done for" and is used in place of an indecent word that is charged with sexuality. Through fire everything changes. When we want everything to be changed we call on fire. The first phenomenon is not only the phenomenon of the fire contemplated in all irs life and brilliancy during an hour of leisure, it is also the phenomenon caused by the fire. The phenomenon caused by fire is the most perceptible of all; it is the one that must be moSt closely watched; it must be speeded up or slowed down; we must grasp the point (or exact degree) of fire which leaves a mark on a substance as \Ile do the instant of love which leaves a mark on an existence. As Paul Valery says, in the arts of fire,18

56

57

the extension of the smelcing oven, the shining vases, still slaves of the fire, still under its power ... Later, the beautiful frail creatures would abandon their father, would detach themselves from him forever; they would grow cold, become cold gems, would lead their new life in the world, enter the service of pleasure-seeking men, encounter dangers, follow the variations in light, receive the cur flower or the intoxicating drink 16

4 Psychoanalysis of Fire

. there can be no giving up, no respite; no fiuc(Uucions in thought, courage or humor. These arcs prescribe, in its most dramatic aspect, the close combat between man and form . Their essential agent, fire, is also the greatest enemy. It is an agent of redoubrable precision, whose marvellous action upon the substance offered to its heat is rigorously limited, threatened and defined by several physical or chemical constants that are difficult to observe. Any error is fatal: the piece is ruined. Whether the fire dies down or whether it blazes up, its caprice means disaster . . .

To this phenomenon through fire, to this most noticeable of all phenomena, which is marked, however, in the depths of the substance, a name must be given: the first phenomenon which merited man's attemion was the pyromenon or product of fire. We shall now see how this fire product, which was so intimately understood by prehistoric man, has for centuries foiled attempts at explanation on the part of scientists.

58

CHAPU:R FIVE

The Chemistry of Fire:

History of a False Problem

In this chapter we shall apparently be changing the field of our study; We shall, in fact, attempt to study the efforts made by objective knowledge to explain the phenomena produced by fire, the pyromena. But in our opinion this problem is really not one of scientific history, for the Scientific part of the problem is falsified by the importation of the values whose action we have demonstrated in the preceding chapters. As a result, we really have to deal only with the history of the confusions that have been accumulated -in the field of science by intuitions about fire. These intuitions are epistemological obstacles which are all the more difficult to overcome since they are psychologically clearer. In perhaps a slightly roundabout way -w e are still dealing, then, with a psychoanalysis which 1s really continuous in spite of the difference in viewpoint. Instead of turning to the poet and the dreamer, this psychoanalysis pays particular attention to the chemists and the biologists of past centuries. But in so doing it discovers a continuity of thought and reverie, and observes that in this union of thought and of dreams it is always the thought that is twisted and defeated. Thus it becomes necessary, as we proposed in a preceding work, to psychoanalyze the scientific 59

PiychoiJ.l1alysis of Fire

Chemistry of Fire

mind, to bind ir to a discursive thought '."hich, far from continuing rhe reverie, will halt it, break it down and prohibit it. \Ve have a ready proof that rhe problem of fire lends itself poorly CO an hisrorical ueatment. Me. J. C. Gregory has written a clear and intelligent hisrory of the theories of combustion from Heraclitus to Lavoisier. Now this book links ideas with such rapidity that fifry pages suffice to tell of the "science" of twenry centuries. Moreover, if we take into account the fact that by the time of Lavoisier these theories were revealed to be objectively false, rhen a doubt must occur ro us as to the intellectual nature of these doctrines. In vain it will be objected that the Aristotelian doctrines are plausible, that they can, with appropriate modifications, explain different stages of scientific knowledge, that they may be adapted to the philosophy of certain periods; the fact remains that one cannot determine the reason for the solidiry and persistence of these doctrines merely by pUtting forward their value as objective explanations. We must go deeper beneath the surface; then we shall come upon the unconscious values. It is these unconscious values which make for the persistence of certain explanatory principles. By a gende form of torture, Psychoanalysis" must make the scientist confess his unavowable motives.

facility chat it would seem that all difficulties have been solved. But how many objeccions could ,ve not make CO their theories? :-Iere chey say that heat is elemcmary Fire, soon it becomes an effective

Fire is perhaps the phenomenon which has most preoccupied chemists. For a long rime it was helieved that to resolve the enigma of fire was to resolve the central enigma of the Universe. Boerhaave, writing about 1720, says:l "If you make a mistake in your exposition of the Nature of Fire, your error will spread to all the branches of physics, and this is because, in all natural production, Fire . . . is always the chief agent." A half-century later, Scheele recalls at one point,2 "the innumerable difficulties presented by research into fire. Ie is frightening to think of the centuries that have elapsed without our succeeding in acquiring more knowledge as to its true properties." At an:" other point he says: Some persons fall into an absolmely opposite kind of error when they explain the nature and the phenomena of Fire with so much 60

Fire: there, light is the purest form of Fire and all elementi here, i[ is already spread (hroughom the ,,,,hole ex(em of the globe, and the impulse of elementary Fire communicates to it its direct movement; there, light is an clement ,vhich one can caprure by means of the acidum pinglle, and which is set free by the expansion of chis supposed acid, etc.

This vacillation, so well indicated by Scheele, is very symptomatic of the dialecric of ignorance which proceeds from obscurity to utter blindness and which readily takes the very terms of the problem to be its solution. Since fire has not been able to reveal its mystery, they take it to be a universal cause: then everything is explained. The more untrained is g presc;f'r"":~'" mind, the greater the problem it selects. About this o~,-",( problem it will write a little book. The book of the marquise du Chatelet is 139 pages long, and its subject is Fire. In prescientific periods it is rhus quite difficult to establish the bounds of one's subjecr of study. For fire, more than any other phenomenon, the animistic and the substantialistic conceptions are mingled in an inextricable fashion. Whereas in our general treatment we have been able to analyze these conceptions separately, we must here study them in their confused combined srate. Whenever we have been able to go more deeply into our analysis, it has been precisely thanks to these scientiiic ideas which have allowed us gndually to discern errors. But fire has not yet found its own science as has electricity. It has remained in the prescientifi.c mind as a complex phenomenon which is dependent both on chemistry and biology. In order that we may account for the phenomena of fire, we musr then rerain in our concept of fire the aggregate aspect rhat corresponds to the ambiguity of the explanations, whic~ pass alternatively from life to matter in an interminable redprocal mocion. Fire can then serve as an illustration for the theses that we PUt forward in our book, The Formation of the.Scientific J~1ind (La Formation de r esprit sdentifique). In particular, through 61

PSYChOillh1ly sis of Fire

CI.,m:is,ry of Fire

the naive ideas thac have been developed about it, fire affords examples of the substa7ltialistic obstacle and of the animistic obstacle which both impede scienrific [hougIH. Vi e shall nrst put forward cases in which [he substantia list assenions are presented 'w ithom the slightest proof. The Reverend Father L. Castel does not question the 1'ealism of firc: 3 "The dark colors used in painting are for the most part the products of nre, and fire always leaves something corrosive and burning in the bodies which have received its hot imprint. Some people claim that these are the igneous parts, composed of a true fire, [hat remain in different kinds of lime, in ashes, in coals and in various types of smoke." Nothing justifies this substantial persistence of fire in coloring matter, bur the suhstantialist thought can be seen at work: that which has received fire must remain burning, and hence corrosive. Sometimes the substanrialist assertion is presented in untroubled purity, quite free from any attempt at proof and even from any illustrative image. Thus Ducarla writes: 4 "The igneous molecules . . . heat because they are; they are because they have been . . . This action never stops going on except for lack of an object." The tautological nature of the substantial attribution is here particularly clear. The joke of Moliere about the dormirive virtues of opium which makes you sleep did not prevent an important, lace eighteenth-century author from saying that the calorific virtue of heat has the property of heating. For many minds, fire has such value that nothing limits its power. Boerhaave claims to make no assumption concerning fire, but he begins by stating without the least hesitation that "the elements of Fire are met evetywhere; they are found in gold, which is the most solid of all known bornes, and in the vacuum of Torricelli." 5 For a chemist as for a philosopher, for an educated man as for a dreamer, fire is so easily endowed with a substance that it can be attached equally well to the vacuum as to the plenum. Doubtless modern physics will recognize that the vacuum is traversed by the thousand radiations of radiant heat, but it will not claim that these radiations are a quality of empty space. If a light is produced in the vacuum of a barometer that 62

is being shaken, the sciemific mind will nor conclude from this that rhe vacuum of Torricelli cont.?ined intent fire. The substanrializacion of fire e:J.sily reconciles its conrradictory characteristics: fire can be quick and Llpid in its dispersed forms; deep and lasting in its concentrated forms . Ir will only be necessary to invoke substcmtial concentration in order to account for irs most varied aspects . For Carra, an author often quoted at the end of the eighteenth century: B

In straw and pape(, the phlogiston component is 'lery rare, whereas it is abundant in coal. The first tWO su bstances nevertheless flame up at the first approach of fire, whereas the latter takes a long time to burn, One can explain this difference in effect only by recognizing chat the phlogiston component: of straw and of paper, although rarer than that of coal, is iri them less concentrated., more disseminated, and consequently more liable to a qu.ick development. Thus an insignificant experiment like that of a piece of paper being quickly set on fire is explained in irs intensity by the degree of substantial concentration of the phlogiston. vVe must stress here this need to explain the details of a first experience. This need for minute explanation is quite symptomatic in non-scientific minds, which claim to neglect nothing and to take into account all the aspec(s of the concrete experience. The quickness of a fire thus oHers false problems: this quickness made such a great impression on our imagination in our childhood! The straw fire remains, for the unconscious, a characteristic fire. Similarly in the work of Marat, a presciencific mind of little intellectual power, the connection of the first experience wim the substancialist inruition is equally direct. In a pamphlet which is merely a precis of his Physical Research into Fire (Recherches physiques sur le Feu), he expresses himself as follows : 7 Why does the igneous fluid attach itself only to inflammable substances?-by virtue of a particular affinicy becween its globules and the phlogiston with which these substances are saturated. This attraction is quite obvious. When, by blowing air through a blowpipe, we attempc to separate from the combustible material the flame 63

a Chemistry

PS),cho,l11alysis of Fire

which is devouring it, we notice that it does not yield without resistance, and that it soon recaptures the space that it has abandoned." ,\;{arat might have added, to complete the animistic image which dominates his unconscious: "Thus dogs return to the prey from which thev . have been driveno1T . This very familiar experience does indeed give us a measure of the tenacity of fire in holding fast to what it is consuming. We need only to try to extinguish a recalcitranc candle from a little distance away, or to blow oue a flaming punch bowl, to gain a subjective measure of the resistance of fire. It is not so rude a resistance as that offered by inert objects to the touch. For this very reason it has alJ the more effect in determining the child to adopt an animistic theory of Ere. In every circumstance the fire shows irs ill will: it is hard to light; it is difficult to pue out. The stuff is capricious; therefore fire is a person. Of course this quickness and this tenacity of fire are secondary characteristics which have been entirely reduced and explained by scientific knowledge. A healthy abstraction has led us to neglect them. Scientific abstraction is the cure for the unconscious. Once it forms the basis of OUr education, it brushes aside the objections that are found scattered over the details of experience. Bue it is perhaps the idea that fire feeds itself like a living creature which is foremost in the opinions developed about fire by our unconscious. For a modern mind, to feed a fire has become a commonplace synonym for keeping it going; but words dominate us more than we think, and the old image will at times come back to the mind when the old word comes back to the lips. It is nor difficult to assemble a good number of texts in which the food of fire keeps its literal primary meaning. A seventeenth-century author recalls that 8 The Egyptians said that it was a ravening, insatiable animal which devours everything that experiences birth and growth; and, after 64

ol

Fire

it has eaten well and gorged itself, it finally devours itself when there is nothing lefe to eat and feast upon; because, having both heat and movement, it cannot do without food and the air it requires to breathe. Vigenere develops his 'w"hole book from rhis initial inspir'1tion. He finds in the chemistry of fire all the chaClcrcrisbcs of digestion. Thus for him, as for many other "vriters, smoke is an excremem of fire. Anmher author, about the same period, writes char9 "the Persians, when they made sacrifices to fire, would present food to it on the altar wlule uttering this phrase . . . 'Eat and feast, 0 Fire, lord of all the world.' " In the eighteenth century, Boerhaave still . finds it necessary to make clear through a long investigation what must be understood by' the aliments of fire ... If we give them this appellation in a restricted sense, it is because we believe that these substances really do senre as food for Fire, that through itS acaon they are converted into the proper substance of elementary Fire and that they lay aside their own primitive nature to take on that of Fire; in this case we are assuming a fact wruch deserves to be examined with mature deliberation. lO And this is what Boerhaave proceeds to do in a great many pages in which he himself offers a feeble resistance to the animistic intuition he is seeking to reduce. We are never completely immune to the prejudice that we spend a great deal of time in attacking. At any rate, Boerhaave saves himself from the animistic prejudice only by fortifying the substancialist prejudice: in his doctrine, the food of fire is transformed into the substance of fire. By assimilation, the aliment becomes fire. This assimilation of substance is the negation of the spirit' of Chemistry. Chemistry is able to study the way in which Substances are combined,are mixed together and remain juxtaposed .. Those are three defensible notions. But Chemistry cannot study how one substance assimilates another. When it accepts this concept of assimilation, the more or less learned form of the concept of food, it throws' 65

CI.,.: ;llistry of Fire Psychoanalysis of Fire

light on the obscure by means of the more obscure; or rath~r it imposes on [he objective explanation the false knowledge gamed from an inrernal experience of digestion . \Ve shall see ho'.\! extensive ate the unconscious values attached to (he food at fire and how desirable it is to psychoanalyze what could be called the Pant{/grueJ c~111p~ex in ,a ~re­ scientific unconscious mind. It is, in fact, a presclentJfic prInCiple that everything that burns muSt receive [he pabulum i?nis. Thus one of the moSt common notions in the cosmologles of the Middle AGes and of the presciencific period is that of food for the stars. In panicular, it is often the function of the terrestrial exhalations to serve as food for the stars. These exhalations feed the comets. The comets feed the sun. Let us examine only a few texts selected from recent periods in order to demonstrate the persistence and the force of the myth of digestion in the explanation of material phenomena. Thtis Robinet writes in 1766:11 It has been stated with a good deal of probability that the luminous globes feed on the exhalations that they draw from the opaque globes, and thac the natural food of the latter is che flood of igneous particles chac the former are continually sending to chern; and thar the spots of the Sun which seem to spread and. darken every ~ay are nothing but an accumulation of crude vapors of ~xpandmg volume that the Sun artracrs unto irsdf; that these clouds of smoke th?t we think we see rising from its surface are really rushing towards this surface; and that in the end it will absorb such a great quantity of heterogeneous material that it will not.only be enveloped and encrusted by it, as Descartes claimed, but will be totally penetrated by it. When this happens it will be extinguished, it wjl\ die, so to speak, by passing from the state of Ughc, which is its life,. co the state of opacity, which we may caU a true death when speaking of the Sun. In a similar fashion the leech dies when it has slaked its thirst for blood. As one can see, the digestive intuition is all powerfuL for Robinet, the Sun King will die from overeating. This principle of the feeding of the Stars by fire is, moreover, quite clear when one accepts the idea still quite prevalent 66

:1mon CT eigbcecnth-ceomry thinkers ri'3t '';t\l the st;lrs ;lre created from ~ne and the same celestial substance of subtle fire." 1 2 They consider that a fundamcn p l ;.1r1;)]og y exists bet"...een the stars formed of rarefied celestial fire and the metallic sulphurs formed of crude terrestrial fire. They believe that they have thereby united the phenomena of earth and sky and have obtained a universal view of the world. And so the anciem ideas continue down through the ages; they keep recurring, even in more or less lcuned reveries, w.ith all their charge of original naivete , A seventeenth-century author will, for example, usually combine che opinions of anciquity ~nd the opinions of his own time: 13 "By reason of the fact that dunng the day the stars attract the vapors in order to feed upon them at night, Euripides has called nighc the nursin~ m~cher of th.e golden stars." Were it not for the myth of dlgesuon, ,were It not for this entirely scomachal rhythm of the Greater Bemg thac is the Universe, a Being who sleeps and eats, adjusting his diet to the day and to the night, many prescientific or poetic intuitions would be inexplicable.

It is particularly interesting from the po.int of vi:w .o~ a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge co see ho~ an mtu.mon loaded with affectivity like the intuition of fire will offer itSelf as an explanation for new phenomena. This cook place at the time when prescienci.fic thought was trying to explain the phenomena of electricity. It is not difficult to prove that the electric fluid is nothing but fire, once one .is content co be swayed by the spell of che substantialist intuition. Thus the :lbbe de Mangin is very quickly convincedY "In the first phce, it is in aU the b.ituminous and sulphurous bodies such as glass and pitch that the electric substance is found, since thunder draws its electric matter from the bitumens and sulphurs attracted by rhe action of the sun." Thus very little more is needed to prove that glass contains fire and to place it in the category of sulphurs and pitches ..So for t~e abbe de Mangin "the sulphurous odor chat glass emItS when 1t happens to break after being rubbed is the convincing proof 67

PSJ cbu.malysis of Fire

Cbemist7y of Fire

thac [he bitumens and rhe oils
is that these people could nor understand how such a fire, brilliant, warm, and capable of setting things on fire, could be contained, without rhe le:Js( discomfoIT, in the human bodv! A mind as precise and meticulous as Winckler's does not qu~s~ (ion in any way the substamialis( postulate, and it is from this absence of philosophical criticism that the false problem will be created: 15 "A fluid cannot set fire to anything unless it contains particles of fire." Since fire comes out of the human body, it is because it was contained beforehand within the human body. Is it necessary co call _mention to the ease with which this inference is accepted by a prescientific mind which is unsuspectingly follOWing the seductive delusions we have exposed in the preceding chapters? The only mystery is that this fire ignites alcohol outside the human body, whereas it does not set fire to the tissues inside the body. This lack of 100'ic io the realistic intuition of fire did not lead, however, to a~y reduction in the concept of the reality of fire. The realism of fire is one of the most indestructible of intuitions.

could insinuate itself into the cells of the little balls of fire which fill the tissue of bodies which are in themselves electric; if it could untie this multitude of little pouches which have the power to contain this hidden, secret and internal fire and jf it could unite itself to it; then these particles of fire, now set free, shaken, compressed, dispersed, reunited and violently agitated, would communicate to the electric fire an action, a force, a speed, an acceleration, a fury which would disunite, break, sec ablaze and destroy the compound. But since this is impossible, bodies like resin, which are electric in themselves, must keep rhe fire locked up in their little boxes; they cannot receive electricity by communication. Here, then, full of imagery and laden with verbiage, is the prolix explanation of the namre of bodies that are poor conductors. Moreover, this explanation, which amounts to the denial of any special nature, is quite curious. The necessity of the conclusion is not very apparent. It would seem that this conclusion merely came to interrupt a smoothly developing reverie which had been really only a matter of piling up synonyms. The realization that electric sparks coming from the charged human body could set fire to brandy caused real amazement. Electrical fire was then a true fire! Winckler lays great stress on "such an extraordinary event." The reason for (his amazement

The realization of heat and fire is also very suiking when carried out in connection with particular substances such as the vegetable substances. The fascination of the realistic delusion can then lead to strange beliefs and practices. Here is one from among a great many examples that could be taken from Bacon (Sylva Sylvarum, para . 456) : "It is reported that mulberries will be fairer, and the trees more fruitful, if you bore the tronk of the tree through in several places, and thrust into the places bored wedges of some hot trees, as turpentine, mastic-tree, guaiacum, juniper, etc. The cause may be, for thatadventive heat doth cheer up the native juice of the tree." This belief in the efficacy of hot substances is long lasting in certain minds, but usually it diminishes and is gradually reduced to metaphor or symbol. It is in such a fashion that crowns of laurel have lost their original meaning: they are now made of green paper, but here is an example in which they are given their full value: 16 "The branches of that tree which antiquity dedicated to the Sun in order ro crown all the conquerors of the Earth, when

68

69

Chemistry of Fire

Psychoanalysis of Fire

shaken together give oue fire, as do the bones of lions." The realiSt conclusion will, moreover, presently appear: "The laurel cures ulcers of the head, and removes facial blemishes." Under the crown how radiant is a forehead! In our day, when all values are metaphors, laurel crov.rns cure nothing more (han cases of ulcerated pride. We are inclined to excuse all these naive beliefs, because we now interpret them only in their metaphorical translation. We forget that they corresponded to psychological realities. Now 'it oEren happens that metaphors have not completely lost their reality J their concreteness. There is still a trace of concreteness in cerrain soundly abstract definitions. A psychoanalysis of objeccive knowledge must retrace and complete this process of de-realization. What gives us a just measure of the errors concerning fire is the fact that they are still, perhaps more than any other type of error, attached to concrete affirmations, to unquestioned inner experiences. Some very special characteristics, which should be the object of a special study, are thus explained by a mere reference to an inner fire. Such is the case for . . . the extraordinary vigor that we observe in certain plants . . . contain within themselves a much more considerable quantiry of this fire than certain others, which are, however, of the same sp~cies. Thus the sensitive plant (mimosa pudica) requires more of this fire than any other plant or natural thing, and I can then understand how it is that when some, other body touches it, it must communicate to it a great part of its fire, which is its very life, so that it falls sick and lowers its leaves and branches until it has had time to recover its vigor by drawing in new fire from the air that surrounds it. whic~

This inner fire that the senSlOVe plant gives forth until it is exhausted has for a psychoanalyst another name, It does not ~ep~nd on ~ny .objective knowledge. One can see nothing which Justifies oblectl'l)el~ the claim that a limp sensitive plant is a plant exhausted of its fire. A psychoanalysis of objective knowl-

edge must tracle down any scientific convictions which have not been formed from specifically objective experiments. In all domains it is repeated withom a shadow of proof that fire is the principle of life. The idea is of such antiqulty that it is accepted as a matter of course. It seems that in general it is convincing, on condition that it is not applied to any particular case. The more precise the application, the more ridiculous it becomes. Thus a specialist on midwifery, after a long treatise on the growth of the embryo and the usefulness of the amniotic fluid, reacheS} the poim where he professes that water, this liquid which is the carrier of all nourishment for the three kingdoms, must be animated by fire. At the end of his treatise can be seen a puerile example of the natural dialectic of fire and water: 17 "Vegetation is the work of that kind of avidity with which fire seeks to combine itself with water, which is its true moderator." This substantialist intuition of fire which seeks to animate water has such fascination that it induces our author "to go more deeply" into a scientific theory which has been roo simply and too obviously based upon Archimedes' principle: "\-Vill we never abandon the absurd opinion that water reduced to steam rises in the annosphere because in this new scate it is lighter than an equal volume of air?" For David, Archimedes' principle ~erends ~n a very i~f~rior science of mechanics; on the contrary It lS ObVIOUS that lt 15 fire, the animating fluid, "never idle," which carries the water along and makes it rise. "Fire is perhaps this active principle, this second cause that has received all its energy from the Creator, and that Scripture has designated by these words: et spiritus Dei ferebatlP super aquar." Such is the fligh.t o~ fancy em~ar~ed ~pon by a specialist in midwifery while meditanng on ammo tiC flUids.

As a substance, fire is certainly among those to which the most values have been attributed and is hence the one which mos~ distorts obj ective judgments. In many respects the value as~nbed to ~re equals th~t of gold. Gold, apart from its germin-

atIve value p

70

10

the mur::taon of metals and its curative value in

Psychoan'1lysis of Fire

ChemiHr), of Fire

the prescientific pharmacoprua, has only its commercial value. Frequently ic even happens chat the alchemist will attribute a value to gold, because it is a receptacle of elementary fire : "The quintessence of gold is all fire." Moreover, in a general manner, fire, a veritable Proteus where the attribution of value is concerned, may pass from the most metaphysical values of principle to the most obvious utilitarian values. It is truly the fundamental active principle which sums up all the operations of nature. An eighteenth-century alchemist wrote: 18 "Fire . . . is nature, which does nothing in vain, which cannot err, and without which nothing is done." Let us note in passing that a Romantic would not speak any differently of passion. The slightest participation is sufficient; fire has only to set the seal of its presence to demonstrate its power: "Fire is always the least in quantity, as it is the first in quality." This powerful action of minute quancicies is highly symptomatic. When it is postulated without any objective proofs, as is here the case, it is because the minute quantity under consideration is magnified by the will to power. We would like to be able .to concentrate all chemical action into a handful of gunpowder{ all hatred into one swift poison, an immense and unutterable love into a humble gift. In the unconscious of a prescientilic mind, fire does perform actions of this kind: an atom of fire in certain cosmological dreams is sufficient to seta whole world ablaze. The same author [Reynier] who criticizes simple images and who declares: 19 "We are no longer living in that cenrury when the causticity and the action of certain solvents could be explained by the tenuity and the form of their molecules, that were supposed to be sharp wedges which penetrated bodies and separated their parts," writes a few pages further on: fire "is the element which gives animation to everything and to which everything owes its being; which, as the principle of life and death, of existence and non-existence, acts by itself and bears within itself the power co act." It would appear, then, that the critical spirit ceases co function when confronted by the inner power of fire; and that the explanation based on fire can penetrate to such depths that it can decide on the existence a.nd

[he non-existence of things, and at the same time invalidate all the poor mechanistic explanations. At all times :lnd in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich expbnarion. A psy~hoan~lysis of objective knowledge musr const:mtly denounce thiS cl;um [0 inner depth and richness. One is definitely jusrified in criticizing [he ingenuousness of a fanciful atomism. Yet at least one must admit thac it lends itself to an objective discussion, whereas che device of resorting to the power of an imperceptible fire, chat is used to explain [he causticity of certain solutions, quite precludes any possibility of objective verification. . . The equation of fire and life forms rhe baSIS of the system of Paracelsus. For Paracelsus, fire is life, and whatever secretes fire truly bears the seed of life. Common mercury is precious in the eyes of the followers of Para eels us, because it COntains a very perfect fire and a celestial inner life, a statement that ~?er­ haave will also make. 20 It is this hidden fire that must be utilIzed for the curing of sickness and for procreation. Nicolas de Locques bases .all the value he attributes to fire on irs inwardness. 21 Fire is "internal or external; the eXternal fire is mechanical, corrupting and destroying, the internal is spermatic, generative, ripening." In order to obtain tl1e eSsence of fire one mUSt go to its source, to its reserve, where it husbands irs strength and concentrates itself, that is to say, to the mineral. Here, then, is the best justification for the method of the spagyrists (alchemists) : "This life-producing celestial fire is very active in the animal which makes a greater dissipati.on of it than does the plam and the metal; that is why the p~lo~opher is c~ncinuallr occupied with seeking means to replentsh 1t; and seemg that It could not be long maintained by the fire of life which is in the animal and in plancs, he has desired to seek it within the metal, where this fire is more fixed and incombustible, more withdrawn and more temperate in its action, leaving herbs for the followers of Galen to make into salads in which this blessed fire will be nothing but a mere spark." In short, they believe so firmly in the universal empire of fire that (hey arrive at this hasty dialectical conclusion: since fire is expended in (he animal, ie is therefore stored up within

71

73

Prychoa1lalysis of Fire

the mineraL There it is hidden, i[HVard, suosrano;'ll, and hence all powerful. In the same way a retiring love is considered ro be a fairhfullove. Such a force of conviction in affirming rhe hidden powers of fire cannot come only from the external experience of wellbeing that is enjoyed in from of a bright fire. There must be added the great and wholly in"ward cerrainties of digestionthe pleasant comfort of hot soup, the wholesome warmth of the alcoholic stimulanc. So long as a psychoanalysis has not been made of the man fiIled to repletion, we shall lack a knowledge of the primordial affective elements which would enable us to understand the psychology of realistic evidence. We have described elsewhere all that realistic chemistry owes to the myth of digestion. We could assemble innumerable quotations concerning the sensation of stomachal heat and the falsely objective inferences that have been attached to it. This sensation is often the perceptible principle of health and of sickness. With respect to sensations of slight pain, the books of the medical practitioners are particularly attentive to the "burning sensation," the "phlogoses," the desiccations which burn the stomach. Each author feels called upon to explain these burning sensations in terms of his system, for without an explanation of everything connected with the fundamental principle of vital heat the system would lose its endre value. Thus Hecquet explains the fire of digestion in the light of his theory of stomachal trituration by recalling that a wheel can catch fire by being rubbed along the ground. It is then the grinding of the foods by the stomach which produces the heat necessary "for their cooking." Hecquet is a scientist; he does not go so far as to believe certain anatomists who have "seen fire coming out of the scomachs of birds." 22 Nevertheless he gives this opinion some prominence, thereby demonstrating that the image of the man vomiting forch flames while dancing is a favorite image of the unconscious. The theory of the inclemencies of the stomach could lead to endless observations. One could seek out the origin of all the metaphors which have led to the classification of foods in accordance with 74

C/Je?1ristry of Fire

their heat, their coldness, theif dry heat, their wet hellt, their cooling 'virtue. One "vould c